Image: poster for John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). A hand holds a knife with the same curve as the sections of the pumpkin on a jack-o-lantern. Text: “The night HE came home!”
Or, a Halloween veteran (me) watches Halloween again with someone who has never seen Halloween (my partner).
On the theme song:
Me: A horror film classic! #iconic
Partner: The first time the theme song came on, I was like “wow, this is so good and creepy” but every time after that I felt like it lost the effect a bit. A+ for the use of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” as diagetic music, though.
On the house:
Me: Remember when movie set houses actually looked like the lower/middle-middle class suburban neighborhood I grew up in?
Partner: Yeah, it’s really hard for me to be scared when the houses all look so polished in contemporary shows.
Me: I keep trying to watch Scream (MTV) and just end up being confused by all the 20-something high schoolers with perfect hair, teeth, and skin in fashionable clothes and in HGTV homes.
Partner: All the outfits in Halloween look realistic and yet are SO GOOD. Those white tights Jamie Lee Curtis has. The platform sandals with socks! The astronaut costume.
On the death scenes:
Partner: These lack a lot of the drama in the death itself. The build-up is still there, and it wasn’t like I was disappointed, but deaths in horror films now are so much more physical. I don’t know which is more accurate, but everyone seemed very passive here.
On horror tropes:
Me: Oh no, teens having sex alert. I swear if I see one more gratuitous boob shot, I’m going to scream. The male gaze is strong with this one.
Partner: I have to keep reminding myself that Halloween set a lot of the slasher film tropes for this era and set trends.
Me: I’m actually surprised that the English class is about the literary discussion of fate and not like vampires and sexuality like it is in every horror film now. Although I would like to give a shout out to Stiles in MTV Teen Wolf for actually applying a lesson about unreliable narrators in Heart of Darkness to his then-current supernatural situation. That’s my boy!
Image: Sandy and Bob in bed, with a jack-o-lantern on the bedside table.
Wait, what?
Partner: I cannot deal with this jack-o-lantern on the bedside table. 100% done.
Me: Bob, get your feet off the upholstery. Kids these days, leaving their shoes on during makeouts at the homes of the children their friends babysit.
Partner: THIS CLOSET HAS NO CLOTHES IN IT WHY
Verdict: An important and scary film to watch as part of the contemporary slasher genre, but the sexist and slut-shaming tropes developed well into the 80s and 90s: teens who have sex die; the virginal Final Girl; the villain who won’t die; horror set in the suburbs; etc. Seeing the origin of many of these tropes is the key to understanding them as well as to understanding the 90s slasher genre that played with and poked fun at the tropes of the 70s and 80s.
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