Taking Shape

by Dustin McNeill

  Carpenter and Hill pack Halloween with references both obscure and overt. Laurie Strode was named after the director’s first girlfriend. The film’s iconic slasher was named in tribute to film distributor Michael Myers, who had helped with the UK release of Assault on Precinct 13. The fictional Haddonfield, Illinois was named after Hill’s hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Smith’s Grove Sanitarium references Smith’s Grove, Kentucky, a stone’s throw from where Carpenter grew up. Both the fake asylum and real-life town are located within Warren County. A self-professed Hitchcock fan, Carpenter named two roles in tribute to the master of suspense. In addition to Loomis being from Psycho, the director also named Tommy Doyle after a character from Rear Window. Sheriff Leigh Brackett was named for the eponymous screenwriter behind films like The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and The Empire Strikes Back. Sadly, Brackett would not live to see her tribute as she passed away during Halloween’s pre-production.

  DEEPER MEANINGS

  Like the Shape’s expressionless white mask, you can project a range of interpretations upon Halloween’s story, some convincingly. As Jamie Lee Curtis has joked, it’s the film that launched a thousand PhD’s. It’s no exaggeration to say that fans, academics, and critics have given John Carpenter’s masterpiece far more thought than he ever did. The film has been deconstructed and overanalyzed for decades in an effort to find some deeper meaning within its story, either socioeconomic, political, or otherwise. Perhaps the easiest way to interpret Halloween is as a morality tale as so many have done. In this reading of the film, the Shape is a patriarchal punisher cutting down those who rebel against a conservative moral code that forbids pre-marital sex. This is supposed to explain why he murders the sinful Annie and Lynda but not the virtuous Laurie. The morality theory remains a popular interpretation that, according to Halloween’s writers, is entirely incorrect and not what they intended. To those who still feel this is the proper takeaway, perhaps Loomis said it best: “You have the wrong feeling.”

  “It has been suggested I was making some kind of a moral statement. Believe me, I was not.”

  - John Carpenter, SciFi.com

  The morality tale theory hinges on the fact that four of the film’s five victims are murdered either pre or post-coital. But as already mentioned, these characters aren’t killed because they’re having sex but rather because they’re too distracted to notice the Shape. In not paying attention to their surroundings, they make themselves vulnerable. Laurie remains on guard throughout the film, however, catching fleeting glimpses of her stalker leading up to his attack. Film scholar Jack Halberstam calls this “the productive fear.” By being aware that she is being watched, Laurie herself becomes watchful. In his book Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, Halberstam writes, “The women who are not worried about being watched within the horror film very often die. The alternative to paranoia very often is nothing more than a gullibility and a kind of stupid naïveté.”

  Incredibly, some feminists were initially dismissive of Halloween upon release for pushing what they believed to be a conservative morality that oppressed women. Debra Hill brushed off such criticism to Entertainment Weekly: “One review said the most notable thing about the movie was that it was produced by a woman, because it shows she has the tacky taste of a male chauvinist pig. I just laughed.”

  Carpenter and Hill have argued that Halloween isn’t a cautionary tale on the dangers of sexual expression but rather on the dangers of sexual repression. While the Shape’s repressed urges play a role in the violence he commits, the filmmakers deny that he is specifically punishing his victims for their sexual activity. Speaking to Cinefantastique, Carpenter commented that “[Michael’s] victims are chosen at random. He doesn’t know they’re going to be promiscuous, doesn’t know anything about them. People get all riled up about that, but they’re missing an important point. Ironically, the one girl in the film who does not fool around, Jamie Lee Curtis, is the one who stabs him over and over with this long knife! She’s as repressed as he is, getting rid of this sexual energy. And no one sees this.”

  This shared repression between slasher and final girl is one deeper meaning you can safely read into the film. In a strange way, it links Laurie and the Shape together as equals, predisposing both to violence. They express this violence in opposing manners, of course. The Shape is driven to attack while Laurie is driven to defend. In her book Games of Terror, author Vera Dika suggests that Carpenter uses the Shape to embody Laurie’s pent-up sexual frustration, which very nearly destroys her. Their final battle, Dika writes, represents a highly sexualized act as both characters attack one another with phallic-looking weapons.

  Halloween’s ending has also been examined through the lens of feminist film theory. While initially (and wrongly) criticized for pushing a conservative moral agenda, scholars have since come to recognize Laurie Strode as a feminist heroine. When attacked by a male predator, Laurie utilizes several everyday items as weapons to defend herself. These objects – a knitting needle and coat hanger – are arguably feminine in nature and yet used to penetrate the Shape in a phallic manner. Laure doesn’t just deflect the masculine violence perpetrated on her - she dishes it right back by taking her attacker’s knife, itself an extremely phallic symbol, and using it on him. She later rips away the Shape’s mask to gaze upon his true face, itself an attack on Michael’s new identity.

  The true genius of Halloween is that it’s not only simple but deceptively simple. This is not by accident but by design. Take the scene where Laurie’s teacher discusses fate. When asked of this scene’s deeper meaning by the Halloween Daily News website, Carpenter remarked, “I have no idea what I’m saying or suggesting with that, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s the illusion of depth without any depth.” As first written into the script, this classroom scene contained an additional dialogue exchange that does not appear in the final film. These lines feel oddly relevant to subject of overthinking Halloween. The teacher asks a student to explain how Samuel’s view of fate differs from that of Costaine. The boy replies, “Uh... doesn’t he feel that no matter how complicated something is, it’s also really simple too?” The teacher pauses for a moment before responding with “No.” It’s almost as though Carpenter and Hill were speaking directly to those who would overthink their story.

  “It is what it is. It’s a very simple film.”

  - John Carpenter, Telegraph.co.uk

  DELETED SCENES OR LACK THEREOF

  The original Halloween was tightly scripted and even more tightly budgeted. A production this lean simply could not afford to have deleted scenes. Consequently, the shooting script closely reflects the final film with a few minor exceptions. One difference involved an iconic line by Dr. Loomis as Michael escapes Smith’s Grove. In the film, Loomis exclaims, “He’s gone! He’s gone from here! The evil is gone.” Within the script, this line is spoken instead by a wandering patient who asks for help in finding his purple lawn mower. That a fellow patient would refer to Michael as evil suggests that he had gained a certain reputation at Smith’s Grove. This implication would shed light on an otherwise mysterious time in Michael’s life.

  Theatrically, we’re told very little of Laurie’s parents, though we do see her father briefly ask her to drop off a key at the old Myers place. As first written, Laurie’s mother was to make a brief appearance as well preparing candied apples as her daughter arrives home from school. This scene would have directly preceded the moment where Laurie mistakes the Shape for the elderly Mr. Riddle next door. (Digression: within the context of Halloween, Mr. Strode asking Laurie to drop off a key at the Myers house is fine. He operates Strode Realty, after all. Yet within the context of Halloween II’s sibling twist, this request is downright twisted. To ask Laurie to drop off a key at the Myers house on the anniversary of her older sister’s murder by her brother is just beyond the pale. You’re a vile one, Mr. Strode.)

  As stylish as Halloween’s opening credits are, they weren’t how Carpenter and Hi
ll originally envisioned opening the film. Per the script, the credits were to feature the Shape`s white mask, not the flickering jack-o-lantern. (“We get closer and closer until we see that the shape is a Halloween mask. It is a large, full-head latex rubber mask, not a monster or ghoul, but the pale, neutral features of a man weirdly distorted by the rubber.”) Halloween then transitions into its memorable opening shot, a killer’s point-of-view that begins and ends outside the Myers house. Carpenter was inspired to attempt such a tracking shot after seeing Orson Welles do it so successfully in A Touch of Evil. Often incorrectly cited as a Steadicam shot, cinematographer Dean Cundey utilized a Panaglide stabilizing mount to achieve the desired effect. (Halloween was only the fourth film ever to utilize the then-new Panavision technology.) While there are several well-disguised cuts within the scene, the opening shot still impresses even today.

  While Halloween is short on deleted material, it did inspire a novel that contained numerous additional scenes. Released in October 1979, the adaptation was penned by author Richard Curtis using the pseudonym Curtis Richards. On the subject of film novelizations, it is not uncommon for such books to contain lines, details, or even entire scenes not featured in the film itself. These discrepancies often owe to the fact that authors are regularly given unfinalized scripts on which to base their work in order to meet publishing deadlines. Certain details inevitably change during filming, which happens independent from the book writing. While this accounts for many film-to-novel differences, it does not explain the new scenes present in Bantam Books’ Halloween novel.

  “The novelization of Halloween was fantastic. It had an entire backstory for Michael that, unless you’ve read it, you don’t really know about.”

  - Daniel Farrands, IconsOfFright.com

  Interestingly, the Curtis novelization appears to have had some effect on John Carpenter and/or Debra Hill during his writing of Halloween II. Several lines that appear exclusively in the novel also appear in the 1981 sequel. This includes the exchange Loomis has with a neighbor (“You don’t know what death is!”), which originally took place in the novel before he shoots Michael rather than after. Curtis is also the writer responsible for giving Michael and Judith their respective middle names - Audrey and Margaret.

  THE NOVEL: PROLOGUE / SAMHAIN

  The Richard Curtis novelization contains what appears to be the first mention of Samhain in connection with the series by way of an exclusive prologue. While the Carpenter film began in 1963 Haddonfield, the novelization goes back many more years to Northern Ireland. Curiously, Halloween’s shooting script makes no mention of Samhain anywhere, though it’s later briefly referenced in Halloween II. The Druid festival of the dead would play a much larger role in 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

  The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in Northern Ireland at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity. Then, its lust sated, it shrank back into the mists of time for a year, a decade, a generation perhaps. But it slept only and did not die, for it could not be killed. And on the eve before Samhain it would stir, and if the lust were powerful enough, it would rise to fulfill the curse invoked so many Samhains before. Then the people would bolt their doors. Scant good it did them, for the thing laughed at locks and bolts, and besides, there were the unwary. Always the unwary.

  The prologue goes on to tell a story of unrequited love involving Princess Deidre, the youngest daughter of the Druid king Gwynnwyll. Now on the cusp of womanhood, she is highly sought after by village bachelors. One commoner especially smitten with Deidre is the unfortunate Enda, who appears physically deformed due to complications at birth. Despite recognizing himself as an unlikely suitor, Enda awkwardly approaches Deidre to plead his case for her hand in marriage. The young princess mistakes him for a rapist before publicly mocking him as such. Enda is distraught at her reaction, even more so as he learns that she is betrothed to Cullain. Heartbroken and angry, he drowns his sorrows in wine as the festival of Samhain begins.

  A drunken Enda seethes with anger as he watches Deidre and Cullain dance alongside other revelers. Wielding a foot-long butcher’s blade, he murders them both in full view of their peers. The prologue notes that Enda is then “literally torn apart by the enraged tribe.” While Deidre and Cullain are laid to rest on hallowed ground, the king orders Enda to be buried alongside fellow outcasts on the Hill of Fiends. Gwynnwyll’s shaman places a curse on Enda’s remains: “Thy soul shall roam the earth till the end of time, reliving thy foul deed and thy foul punishment, and may the god Muck Olla visit every affliction upon thy spirit forevermore.” What does any of this have to do with Michael Myers? We’re getting there.

  With the coming of modern civilization, the superstitions and traditions of the original festival lost their meaning and vitality. Token recognition could be seen in the custom of lighting candles in jack-o’-lanterns, hanging effigies of witches and goblins outside homes, and playing good-natured pranks that were a feeble cry from the mayhem of the old times. Children paraded about in costumes whose significance had long ago lost their correspondence to the evil that once gripped the world at the onset of winter. Halloween, like many of the holidays, had become an empty shame. Except that from time to time, the innocent frolic of All Hallow’s Eve was shattered by some brutal and inexplicable crime, and the original spirit of the celebration was brought home to a horrified world.

  THE NOVEL: HALLOWEEN NIGHT 1963

  After a prologue that in no way reflects anything in the Carpenter/Hill script, the Curtis novel charts more new territory with an opening set before the murder of Judith Myers on Halloween night 1963. Whereas the film opens with Judith’s murder, the novel begins several hours prior to it with young Michael visiting his maternal grandmother on Halloween night. She recites grisly tales of “the boogeyman” from her youth much to his delight. Michael’s mother protests the telling of such stories due to her son’s recent issues, which include getting into fights, bed wetting, and hearing voices telling him to hate people. The grandmother is deeply troubled by these developments, noting that Michael’s great-grandfather suffered similar issues many years before. A chat between Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett later on further reveals that Michael’s great-grandfather was compelled by voices to shoot two people at the town’s harvest dance.

  Grandma initially mocks Michael’s clown costume as “five-and-dime-junk” and dismisses modern Halloween traditions as silly. She recounts several “back in my day” stories about how the holiday was celebrated in olden times including a reference to the boogeyman. Her demeanor changes dramatically upon learning of Michael’s recent troubles. Now trembling, she changes her negative attitude toward her grandson’s costume and begs his mother to phone once they’re in for the night. This grandmother role strongly evokes the elderly Mrs. Blankenship from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers: “We took Halloween seriously. When we set up scarecrows and jack-o’-lanterns, it was because we were genuinely trying to scare off the boogeyman.” Compare that to Mrs. Blankenship’s monologue: “All across the land, huge bonfires were lit. Oh, there was a marvelous celebration. People danced, and they played games, and they dressed up in costumes hoping to ward off the evil spirits, especially the boogeyman.”

  It’s interesting to note that the Curtis novel does something the Carpenter film never does – it lets Michael speak! Recall that young Michael’s sole appearance in the theatrical cut is brief and without dialogue. The novel, however, gives the adolescent Shape a plethora of lines!

  As Halloween night continues, we find Judith alone at the Myers homestead awaiting her boyfriend. Her brother, meanwhile, is out with a group of neighborhood kids. When the trick-or-treaters knock on the door at 45 Lampkin Lane, it’s Judith that answers. She teases them at first, “What if I don’t give you candy? What are you gonna do?” The children shrug, though Michael eventually speaks up: “We’re gonna kill y
ou.” Shocked, Judith scolds him for making such a comment to which he replies, “I’m not Michael Myers. I’m a clown.” This eerie exchange suggests that a powerful evil has already begun to take hold of the boy.

  The novel then falls more in line with the opening of the Carpenter film. Young Michael approaches and enters the darkened Myers house as Judith and her boyfriend make love. Here the author again goes beyond the film’s narrative to allow the reader insight into Michael’s mental state. The murderous rage he feels toward his sister is revealed to be the result of a voice that has been plaguing his mind. The novel also tells that Michael has seen mysterious visions of ancient celebrations, though he knows not what they are. One of these visions appears identical to the ancient Samhain festival from the prologue. In fact, Michael imagines himself as Enda watching angrily from afar as Judith and her boyfriend dance among the crowd as though they were Deidre and Cullain.