He’s Gonna Get You, He’s Gonna Get You, He’s Gonna Get You: The Boogeyman Is Coming (Halloween, Part 2)
I grew up fascinated with the Halloween franchise.
I dream of being able to write a novelization of the franchise that cleans up the narrative mess we run into in installments 5 and 6. I honestly love these movies.
As I said in my previous post, TONS has been written and said about this franchise. I doubt I’ll say anything you haven’t heard already.
But I gotta give my love.
So we can stay in the same page, here again is my ranging of my Top 8 Halloween installments:
1. Halloween, 1978
2. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
3. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
4. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
5. Halloween 2: The Nightmare Continues
6. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
7. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (Does Not Feature Myers)
8. Halloween, 2007
The original is the best and it’s always gonna be the best.
Here, I want to look at Halloween, Halloween 2, and Halloween H20 as a packaged story, because that’s the strongest narrative in the whole franchise. And no, this is not a play-by-play.
H20
If we eliminate installments 3, 4, 5, and 6 and focus only on 1, 2, and 7 (H20), we could have ourselves a horror narrative as compelling as Alien. Not high-brow, but compelling.
Myers kills his sister when he’s 6. Myers breaks out of the state hospital at 21. Myers goes after Laurie and her friends. Two decades later, Myers comes back for Laurie and her son.
Even if we say Michael isn’t really killed at the end of this movie — which, okay, sure — even if we do that, while pushing that detail off to another installment, this is a mature and powerful plot that stays true to the characters without compromising the slasher genre.
In fact, this storyline lends more legitimacy to the slasher genre.
It makes sense: Myers is still out for revenge and Strode has gone on with her life as much as she can.
Here’s the Thing Though
The young Jamie in Halloween 4, 5, and 6 gives crucial backstory to H20. Jamie is Laurie’s daughter. Laurie faked her death in a car accident and escaped to California where she changed her name and started a new life.
All of that contributes to Laurie’s alcoholic paranoia. Not just the trauma of the murders she directly survived, but also the pain of leaving behind her daughter and the rest of her family.
I know Halloween 2018 was touted as a look at Laurie being a woman battling demons for decades. That element of Laurie Strode’s character was successfully established in H20.
H20 gracefully keeps the storyline of the ’78 original, goes with the sibling connection of the sequel, and subtly connects 4, 5, and 6 without browbeating us with a plot rehash. No question things are left unexplained, especially after the ending in 6.
It’s a noble bookend.
‘Like What You See, Bob?’
Suggestion, aesthetic, soundtrack, and two sets of boob shots help make the ’ 78 original the best. (I could be wrong, but I think this is the only Halloween to have explicit nudity until Halloween 2007.)
The first boob shot is that of the legendary Judith Myers in the opening sequence. The scenario’s a little murderous to get turned on by, but they are nice. And the second of course is Linda in bed with Bob. And yeah, that’s a little murderous too. Kinda comes with the territory, I suppose.
Boobs are good.
The original Halloween is compelling because there isn’t an explanation. Why did he kill his sister? Why did he get out and kill again? No one knows.
The original is not a spoof and it’s not a gruesome movie.
The suspense in the cemetery is one of my favorites. When Loomis goes to check on Judith Myers’s grave, the groundskeeper who’s walking with him gives us enhancing dialogue:
You know, every town has something like this happen. I remember over in Russellville, old Charlie Bowles, about 15 years ago. One night he finished dinner and he — he excused himself from the table. And he went out to the garage. And he got himself a hacksaw. And then he went back into the house, and he kissed his wife and his two children goodbye, and then he proceeded to —
Loomis interrupts him
Where are we?
It’s enhancing because it sets the scene, but you never know what happened. I’ve always wanted to know what happened.
We can assume Charlie Bowles used that hacksaw on his family. But we don’t actually know. There’s room for wonder. What if instead of choosing his family, Bowles used the hacksaw on someone else?
The vignette builds curious suspense to the discovery of Judith’s missing gravestone, and Loomis delivering the tagline: “He came home.”
I also appreciate the mention of Russellville in Halloween 2.
The Most Important Subplot
The most important subplot lot is the relationship between Dr. Samuel Loomis and Michael Myers. That relationship comes to a perfect end at the beginning of H20.
It’s not lost on me that Sam Loomis is also the name of Marion Crane’s lover in Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho, or that Loomis’s nurse in ’78 and ’98 is also named Marion. Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee Curtis’s mom) played Marion Crane, making her cameo in H20 … well … that much more AWESOME.
Donald Pleasance’s last film role was as Dr. Loomis in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
H20 opens at Nurse Marion’s house, the same Nurse Marion who goes with Loomis to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium in ’78 when Myers escapes. After the police clean up the scene, Dr. Loomis provides a haunting voice-over as the camera looks over articles on Michael Myers, Sam Loomis, and Laurie Strode.
We see a clipping of Laurie Strode’s car accident as Loomis tells us about “the blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes.”
2024 is now 26 years after the release of H20. That’s 46 years after the original.
I don’t think anything should’ve come after H20. There’s no need.
Except an installment that retroactively fills in the story between the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments.
You can do interviews with surviving relatives or friends of Michael’s victims. What happened to Tommy from The Curse of Michael Myers? What happened to Jaimie’s baby (also from The Curse)? How did Michael and Laurie’s parents turn out?
There are a few creative and compelling angles that are valid and would add to the franchise, keep the revenue flowing, and keep the spirit of this world alive — without a reboot, without a direct sequel, and without throwing away years of story.
I’d love to do it, at least in a novel.
Swivels in, Swivels out.
