It's time to conclude my wholly fanciful and no doubt incorrect Speculative Interpretation of Halloween. I will begin concluding by noting the following scene. Annie and Laurie are driving around, smoking a joint and listening to music. They are apparently unaware that they are being followed…

Why does the car stop here? Why not just keep following Annie and Laurie? At this point, we don’t have an answer. And the driver of the car has no idea where the two girls are going. So why not continue to follow them? I think there’s a good reason why the car stops here.

They come up on Annie’s father, the cop, standing outside of the hardware store. The burglar alarm is ringing away. So Annie pulls up, apparently not concerned that her father will smell the burnt marijuana in an instant.

Annie wants to know what happened. Her father tells her that someone broke into the hardware store…probably kids. Annie takes offense to the suspicion that it was kids who did it. But her father then states why he believed it was kids…

Well, all they took was some Halloween masks, rope, and a couple of knives.

There may be a slight deception. It sound like he says…mask, i.e. the singular. But it is clear as it can be that the immediately preceding word is…some. So why would Michael Myers take some masks and a couple of knives? The answer to that is clear…there is more than one killer. Michael Myer is not working alone…someone is helping him. And! Both are wearing the same mask, and similar jumpsuits. That means that throughout the movie, we are actually seeing two, similar looking guys.

I noticed too that when Laurie was attacked, she was pursued upstairs. She chose to hide in a bedroom closet…well, at least she didn’t try to hide under the bed! That never works! Now the closet door was one of those thin, accordion style doors. And it is clear that, by the way it shakes around when Laurie closes it, that it is very flimsy. Yet, Laurie’s attacker seems to have a great deal of trouble breaking into it. He pulls and yanks on it, before finally realizing that he can punch his way through it…

I was rather amazed by how hard it seemed for Michael Myers to bash his way through a door that shouldn’t have been any problem at all. It’s probably just me, but it seemed like the guy who was chasing Laurie at the house where Annie and Linda were killed, had far less trouble bashing through a much stronger door…

A standard interior door is far harder to simply punch through than flimsy accordion doors. And so two houses, two types of doors. Michael Myers has trouble with the accordion doors, yet the other guy has no trouble with the stronger door. I can offer two other examples…

Ok, Lynda’s boyfriend Bob is not a small guy. He was attacked and killed in the kitchen when he went looking for beer. What this shot shows is that Bob’s killer grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Carpenter intentionally called attention to this fact…

The long shot of the feet should cause anyone to think…that is a strong guy! That is a guy who can punch through an interior door with no trouble at all. The demise of poor Boyfriend Bob, in this scene leads credence to the Two Killer Hypothesis…

Bob arrives in the kitchen to make his Inter-House Beer run, which is to say…steal someone else’s beer. And it’s Halloween, so you don’t turn on the lights, even though it is easier to steal stuff when the lights are on. Bob is looking toward the door leading outside. Why? Well, it was closed when he arrived in the kitchen, but then suddenly opens…not thrown open, it opens very slowly. Why? Because someone standing outside has opened it. Now this ratchets up the tension. Bob closes the door, thinking someone is playing a prank on him. Understatement!

Always check the cupboard…otherwise you won’t know what pests you have in there! I think it is clear that Michael is outside the door and slowly pushes it open. Then The Shape, the strong one, jumps out of the cupboard and delivers the coup de grace. The scene features two killers.

Now for another example...

In this scene, Michael, far left, is casing the house. But the next scene features…

While Michael is watching the house where Annie is babysitting, Dr. Loomis and the cop go to the old Myers residence. Dr. Loomis was unable to discover the age of Judith Myers when she was killed because the headstone had been stolen from the cemetery. Not knowing the age of the intended victim, the most he can do is hang out at the Myers house and wait for Michael. The two go inside, and then upstairs. Loomis says that Michael may have just been there earlier and could have seen them pull up. Not true…Michael is elsewhere. But then…

After a momentary relaxing of the tension, part of the guttering from the roof has been knocked loose, smashing the glass of the window. It is clear that Dr. Loomis was right…but not completely. Someone had been in the house, and he did indeed see Loomis and the cop walk up to the house. He climbed out the window, and up onto the roof, knocking the guttering loose. So again…two killers. At this point, one is watching the other house…Michael, and the other was waiting in the old Myers house. The strength and agility involved in this daring escape clearly indicates the stronger of the two. I show a shot from earlier in this essay…

This is from the beginning of the film. Michael was in the Myers’ old house when Laurie walked up to the door. Michael thinks…this could be the Resurrected Judith! But he’s not sure, so he stalks her as he tries to make up his mind. She had Tommy with her at the time, and so Michael is curious about him as well. Surely he’s not her son, making him Michael’s nephew! No, his Resurrected Sister had to be 16 years old. But still…Michael’s trying to figure things out. No there is simply no denying that this angle indicates that the stalker is watching Tommy FROM THE BACKSEAT! So who is driving? Who drove the car from the insane asylum at the beginning of the film?

The credits offer proof, and then a mystery. Here we go…

So Tony Moran played Michael Myers. And this is the shot of Moran when his mask was removed…

And…

So this is Tony Moran, and Tony Moran played Michael Myers. Ok, then…

So we have Tony Moran playing Michael, and Nick Castle playing…The Shape. So there are two characters…Michael Myers, and The Shape. The same? I find it impossible to believe. If there were two killers, then we expect the credits as listed above. Ok, but now it really gets interesting.

Ok, we know about two killers…but how is Michael 23 years old? We’re told that Michael was six years old in 1963 when he murdered his sister. Dr. Loomis said that Michael, in the asylum, was under his care for 15 years…

6 + 15 = 21

…not…23. And just working off the dates…

1978 – 1963 = 15 years

So, again…how could Michael have been 23 years old in 1978?

1978 – 23 = 1955

And that is the mystery. So what is the explanation for this? The easiest answer would be…a mistake. Hardly. The movie is very well executed, and if my interpretation is correct, the key story-lines were not perceived by virtually all movie-goers. And! There isn’t much to the credits, so it would be a whopping big error…not the error itself…the error of editors not catching a whopping big error. But if the number 23 is correct, then it must have an equally quantifiable interpretation. Now one trap movie-goers easily fall into is assuming that the Artificial Reality of the movie is set in the year that they were sitting in their seats in the theater. If a chronological marker is not flashed before the eyes of the viewer, then the assumption will be that the story in the Artificial Reality is happening in the year the movie was released. But chronological markers can be present, and yet be imperceptible. This, to coin a phrase, is a Buried Chronological Marker. A good example is The Shining. The movie was released in 1980. But there are no Overt Chronological Markers. There is, however, a Buried Chronological Marker at the beginning of the film. Jack is sitting in the lobby of the Overlook Hotel, waiting to speak to the manager. So he does what any of us would do…picks up a magazine toflip through it as he waits. We see this…

Yes, Jack is reading Playgirl magazine. I am posting an essay that discusses this detail as part of my interpretation of The Shining. But we get a clear look at the magazine, and it is…

…the January 1978 edition. So it is 1980 when you watched the movie, but this Buried Chronological Marker indicates that the date in the Artificial Reality, is 1978. A Clockwork Orange offers another example of a Buried Chronological Marker. The movie was released in 1971. Now the setting for the movie is clearly Great Britain. But the setting is frequently described as dystopian, which is the opposite of utopian, indicating a time in which everything seems to be desperately bad. It is often said that the setting, chronologically speaking, is in the future. The elements of the setting are certainly not reflective of what would be the 1971 criminal youth culture. Milk bars that serve milk laced with powerful drugs, the way the droog cliques dress, and other elements would seem future enough. But! The Playgirl magazine in The Shining causes us to move the date back from 1980 to 1978. This shot is from A Clockwork Orange…

This is a newspaper featured briefly in the movie. Now to blow-up the relevant part of the newspaper…

…the date is September 11, 1972. Not really a dystopian future. Carpenter gives us a very Overt Chronological Marker…

So there is no doubt about the date of the murder of Judith Myers. What year is it in the Artificial Reality?

So we know the date when the story begins, and we know the date in the Artificial Reality that represents the current context. That being the case, how is Michael 23 years old in 1978? I must admit at this point that I am led to a crazy conclusion. And all I am doing, as far as the Chronological Markers are concerned, is to engage in a little bit of Speculative Interpretation. If we have two killers in the film, then we have two men that may very well be of two different ages. But that is only the starting point. We still have a problem with the following context…Dr. Loomis says that Michael was 6 years old when he became his patient, and he was his doctor in the asylum for 15 years.

I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told that there was nothing left. No reason…no conscience…no understanding, or even the most rudimentary sense of life or death…of good or evil…right and wrong. I met this six year old child with a blank, pale emotionless face…he had the blackest eyes, the Devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up. Because I learned that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply…evil.

Chock-Full-of-Overt-Chronological-Markers! A very fixed time-line. But as I noted earlier…Dr. Loomis wasn’t the first person to work with Michael. In fact, a strange context emerges. Loomis says that Michael never spoke the whole 15 years he was his patient. Yet, as I also noted, Loomis has a very firm belief that Michael is pure evil. Thus Loomis believes that Michael is the Devil In Human Disguise. I asked the question…if Michael was catatonic and never spoke, how could Loomis reach such an extreme conclusion? I suggested that Loomis is mentally unbalanced, which I also concluded about Father Karras. But…does that mean Michael spoke to someone about his Terribly Evil Plans, resulting in Loomis’s delusion being built around what the previous doctor told him? I noted that this scene…

…is where Loomis visits the cemetery to see the grave of Judith Myers. I suggested that the only reason to do so is that Loomis knows that Michael believed that his sister would come back from the dead. So he needed to know the age of Judith at her death in order to identify the most likely victim of Michael Myers. That said, there is another potential source of this information, one that is more convincing.

Still, our Chronological Mystery remains. Assuming that the credits are NOT in error, then I would take the information about Michael’s age in 1978, separate it from all the other chronological information, and then reach a conclusion about it.

This would suggest that although Michael Myers killed his sister in 1963, he was not the person committed for it. This would, in turn, suggest that Michael had a younger brother, and that for some reason, he was committed to the insane asylum instead of Michael. So what does that mean for Michael? He was never committed, and was living somewhere, perhaps with his parents. Michael’s younger brother had helped him in some way, perhaps by watching the house after Mr. and Mrs. Meyers left for the evening. Michael, who was free, waited for October 30, 1978…and so did The Shape, who broke out at the appointed time. I would suggest that Michael helped his brother break out.

It is worth taking a look back at the beginning of the movie…

Now what is happening is that as Judith gets it on with her boyfriend, he suddenly hears a noise and asks if they are alone. Judith tells him that Michael is around.  The beginning of the movie is seen through the eyes of someone…and it is very tempting to believe that that person is Michael Myers. But I would note something. That person, i.e. Michael, is the person walking around the house…stalking. The boyfriend has heard something, but he is not looking toward Michael’s location. Now it is possible to hear someone prowling around outside. But if you turn up the volume as loud as it will go, what you hear is someone either growling, or breathing in such a way that it sounds like growling. Later scenes feature heavy breathing, but one gets the impression that that is due to the masks that Michael and The Shape are wearing. As Michael approaches the house, and then walks around it, I can’t hear this sound. It is not until someone is standing at the window that it becomes audible. I think that the boyfriend hears this sound, not someone outside in the bushes. This could suggest that the strange growling, which is what I think it is, is coming from another spot. Based on Dr. Loomis’s statements, Michael had talked to someone about the murder of his sister…otherwise, how could that person, some kind of psychologist, pass on the idea that Michael was evil?

Now I feel safe in saying that not speaking for fifteen years would be almost impossible to do. You get a terrible headache, a tooth starts to go bad, you feel yourself becoming very sick, etc. Simply not speaking AT ALL for fifteen years is virtually…impossible.

Meet Jamie Tennyson, a man who drones on and on, seemingly without having to stop one second to take a breath.

Meet Colonel Archie Taylor, another member of the same upper-class, blue-blood social club as the guy who won’t shut up. And Tennyson needs money. So Taylor makes a bet with Tennyson…he will give him $500,000 if Tennyson can go one year without speaking. They set up a special room for him in the club so that he can be monitored. Taylor begins offering Tennyson smaller amounts of money if he’ll end the bet before one year. But Tennyson holds firm. Finally, the day comes, and Taylor must pay up. But he can’t…he’s broke. What upset Tennyson so much was that…

…knowing that he could never remain silent for a year, but needing the money, he had his vocal chords cut. A very cool episode of Twilight Zone called…The Silence. Imagine having to go fifteen years without speaking!

Now it is true that for most people, 15 years of silence is impossible. But as we find with Tennyson, some people would find it easy to never say a single word for the rest of their life. Those people…cannot speak…are physically unable to speak. They have no choice, and so terrible or fearful things that would cause the most reticent to break their silence...it doesn’t matter…they can’t speak. I think that the person that Loomis believed was Michael Myers, was actually someone else…The Shape…Michael’s younger brother. He had a condition that rendered him unable to speak, although he apparently made a growling sound as he tried. Catatonia? Being committed for something Michael did, all he could do was to wait. Michael told him that sixteen years later Judith would come back from the dead…and he would have to kill her again, and since he would need The Shape’s help, he would have to wait until October 30, 1978, when Michael would help him escape. But someone had to be Michael and had to be locked up. For some reason, and I’m still working on this one, The Shape was particularly strong. Perhaps he dedicated himself to physical fitness while locked up. But here’s another twist…it could be that even if The Shape wanted to tell someone that he wasn’t actually Michael…he could simply write down the truth. Ah, yes! However, if The Shape had a mental retardation, then it may have been that not only could he not speak, he could not write either! That would leave Michael free for fifteen years, and his younger brother…waiting. Michael was actually eight years old when he killed Judith, making him 23 years old in 1978, as the credits state. But he was passed off as 6 years old when the substitution took place, accurately reflecting the age of The Shape, who would be 21 in 1978.

Wait…what did you say?

He’s 8 years old…right? That’s what the intake forms say.

Michael? No, your forms are wrong…he’s 6.

Are you sure?

Of course I’m sure! He’s my son, isn’t he?

Oh, it must be a clerical error, I’ll correct the record.

Yes, Dr. Loomis, he’s a 6 year old boy who murdered his sister.

Dreadful! Does the file say why?

Sure does…and some ghastly stuff, I’d say! Wait ‘til you read about the boy with the Blackest of Eyes!

Oh, you mean…like the Devil’s eyes?

This kid is the Devil! He has no concept of right and wrong, good and bad…he’s absolutely obsessed with his sister. And you won’t believe what he believes about her only temporary residence in the Netherworld!

Well, we know where Judith is buried…when the time comes, I’ll check her tombstone.

The only way that such a substitution could take place is if the plot was carried out…by the parents. It is of course possible that rather than one doctor talking to Michael, and then his brother being substituted for him, the substitution could have taken place on that fateful night before the police arrived. Then, the original doctor was told what Michael believed…and since The Shape couldn’t speak or write, the doctor went by what he was told, and then told it to…Dr. Loomis. I think that breaking out of the asylum would have been much easier if The Shape had help from someone on the outside…such as Michael. While there are people…criminals…who want to help other criminals break out of jail…the prison authorities are aware of this. And although an insane asylum is a place where most inmates would like to escape from, I doubt that there are a lot of people on the outside who want to help them do so. Thus, a clever Michael could actually set The Shape free. Security would be aimed at keeping inmates in the facility, rather than keeping someone from the outside from getting in. This was the scene on the night that The Shape was set free…

…it’s hard to see, but what this shot shows is a group of inmates wandering around within the perimeter fence. You could try to get into the asylum and seek to rescue one guy, or you could do something far more clever…such as, open the doors, and set off the fire alarm! Patients would make their way out of the building, and in the ensuing chaos, which must have just occurred seeing that the patients had not yet been rounded up, the guy you meant to free…could now flee the facility before anyone really knew it. And now it gets interesting! We saw earlier that this is Michael Myers…

Michael Unmasked…played by Tony Moran. Now it will be remember that in the credits, the actor who played 23 year old Michael Myers, not 21 year old Michael Myers, is Tony Moran. However, The Shape was played by Nick Castle. And this is what I believe The Shape looked like…

When Dr. Loomis had the nurse stop the car so that he could go up to the security gate, presumably to talk to security about what had happened, this man jumped over the fence and landed on the car. He forced the nurse out of the car, and he then drove away, no doubt picking up Michael along the way.

It is odd that he would be called…The Shape. Surely, he had a name. It may have been Michael who coined this bizarre nick-name for his younger brother. And the origin of that nick-name could have been a perception on the night of the murder. I have said that if you listen very carefully to the sounds at the very beginning, when Michael walked around the house to the window through which he could watch Judith and her boyfriend making out, the boyfriend suddenly looks around the room when he hears, apparently, the same strange growling sounds that we hear. Now it’s true that the boyfriend reacts when Michael is at the window…so I’m wrong and it’s Michael that makes the strange growling sounds…right? Possibly, but I don’t think so. It may be that we hear the growling sounds, because Michael now stands in front of an open window…he can hear it, so we can hear it. Now it must be admitted that the boyfriend reacts to the sounds when Michael positions himself in front of the open window. The boyfriend heard the sounds, Michael heard the sounds, and then we heard the sounds. Once Michael enters the house, he passes through the same room that Judith and her boyfriend were in before going upstairs. One must always notice extended shots of a room. Once upstairs, the extended shot of Judith’s bed provides us with Michael’s motive for killing her. But in the case, we get an extended shot of…

The rocking chair, but also the dark, strange shape created by the shadow behind it. Could the other brother have been hiding in the corner the whole time? Or perhaps another possibility…when Michael looks into the room, he is not looking through the window in the above shot. He is looking through a window with a side-view. When the boyfriend hears the sounds, he looks toward this corner, but the window appears to be open. So, the two boys approach the house at the same time. Michael goes to the side window, and The Shape looks in through the front window. He begins growling when he sees what is going on. Judith and her boyfriend go upstairs to her bedroom. Michael actually enters the house through the back, so The Shape climbs in through the front window, and hides in the corner. Michael naturally looks at him as he passes, thus our extended shot. Now Michael, having put on the clown mask before killing Judith, begins to breath heavily. That is because of the mask, and it should be remembered that Michael was not wearing the mask until he got upstairs. Yet the growling was audible while he was still standing at the side window, when he was not wearing a mask.

There would also appear to be a Time Distortion…by which I mean that a longer period of time passes in the Artificial Reality than it seems to the viewer. This means that a much longer period of time has passed within the story than we can perceive without other cues. A great example of this type of Time Distortion occurs in A Clockwork Orange, and at the point in the story where the ultra-violent Alex has gone to prison, and then earned early release by undergoing a highly controversial conditioning procedure…

So where are we with this shot? Alex has left prison after his Ludovico treatment, and upon arriving at his parents’ flat, is told that his old room has been rented to a contract worker named Joe. Then he does something the old Alex would never have done…he cries, then leaves, without delivering a tolchok to anyone…the new Alex! What follows is absolutely fascinating.

Alex stops to stare at the bridge. In reality, Kubrick is inserting a very subtle hint and something very important, and it is very difficult to perceive.

This is an extended shot. I was fooled by this scene as much as anyone. The camera is Alex’s eyes…his glazzies…but what is he looking at? I say…the water. And so we, like Alex, look at the water. But is that where we should be looking? Should we be looking at…

…the bum?  No. Here it is, side-by-side:

As we watch the film, Alex stands staring at the bridge for only a couple of moments. So, that is the amount of time we perceive as having passed. But Kubrick has tricked us! Much more time has passed than we perceive…hours have passed. How do I know? Don’t look at the bridge, or the water, or the bum, or even Alex…look at the pilings of the bridge…the water level has increased dramatically, indicating, not the passage of a few moments as the viewer perceives it, but rather…hours have passed. In fact, in this case, I think that the actual Movement of Time has Alex leave his parents flat, then momentarily stop and gaze at the river, and then he left! He went to seek out his pre-prison droogie pals. Not having located them, he returns to where he was before…hours later. I thought the following component of the story was forced and unbelievable, when, in a few moments, Alex…

…looks up and sees Dim and Georgie Boy, two of his former gang of droogs. He is not shocked to see them. He is shocked to see that his former colleagues in the Lashings of the Old Ultra-Violence are now…cops. What a coincidence that they showed up? Not at all. If Alex went looking for them, not knowing that they were cops now, someone Alex knew told him that he would find Dim and Georgie Boy, and tell them that he, Alex, was waiting on the bridge. So now…no unbearable coincidence. But to put that together, we need to perceive the Time Distortion.

Ok, but what about the opening scene of Halloween? The time distortion begins here…

You can see Judith and her boyfriend through the curtain of the door. So they are in the foyer, which gives the sense of the boyfriend having just arrived. They then quickly go into the small room with the rocking chair. The Shape walks up to the front window, while Michael goes around to the side window. Judith and her boyfriend are making out in the front room. The boyfriend hears The Shape at the front window. Then the two go upstairs. If you turn the volume up all the way, Judith, having just let her boyfriend in the house, says…

My parents won’t be home until ten…

They aren’t in the front room long before going upstairs.  Originally, I found this rather funny…

In a very short period of time, the boyfriend is coming down the stairs. Typical! He’s no Superman…apparently lacking in, shall we say, staying power? In other words, he’s no Min!

 
Wham-bam-thank-you-mam! The boyfriend leaves, and Michael goes upstairs and kills Judith. He seeks to flee the house, and then…

Mom and Dad are home. This means it should be about 10:00 pm, since Judith told her boyfriend that that was the time that her parents would be home. Thus Judith’s fling with her boyfriend, which involved the two of them having sex in Judith’s upstairs bedroom, could not have started more than 7 minutes prior to her parents anticipated return. The consequences of being caught were potentially huge…more like Min and less like Pazuzu and Khufu…and it is simply ridiculous to believe that, knowing her parents are coming home at 10:00, she and her boyfriend planned to start at 9:53 and finish by 9:59. It would be far too close to the arrival of her parents to get down and dirty so late…who knows? Maybe Mom and Dad will get home earlier! There must have been plenty of time before 10:00 pm to allow for the night’s activities, and to be sure that all was said and done, and the fat lady had sung her erotic song with plenty of wiggle-room should her parents come home a little early. How much time? I don’t know. But the most important question is…what were Michael and The Shape doing during that period of time? Presumably, when the parents found Judith’s dead body, they called the cops. But before the cops arrived, Mom and Dad swapped The Shape and Michael, sending The Shape on the path of 15 years of not having anything in particular to say to Dr. Loomis. The parents fed the story-line to the doctor prior to Loomis, and that doctor fed the false information to Loomis. If Michael and The Shape were in on this murder, then perhaps Michael explained to his brother that Judith would rise from the dead in 15 years, when she, in her Latest Manifestation, was 16 years old, Judith’s age when Michael killed her. But how could she be 16 years old in 15 years? Michael was a child, and he began the chronological clock with the year 1963, counting the year 1963, thus making 15 years become 16 years. With the Time Distortion, we can believe that Judith’s boyfriend was a tad bit less selfish than we might otherwise think. That is, of course, only the opinion of...

...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! At the end of the movie, there is a sequence of events that helps to create the Supernatural Evil Michael Myers myth. Specifically, there are three scenes, but it is the final one that is most suggestive. Laurie became concerned about the lack of lights on in the house across the street, and the fact that no one was answering the phone. The house in question is the one where Annie had been babysitting. She took Lindsey over to Tommy’s house, so that she could pick up her boyfriend Paul, despite the fact that she still didn’t have any pants on. She was killed in the garage in the car. She was followed by Lynda’s boyfriend Bob, and the Lynda. When Laurie went across the street, she was attacked. Both Michael and The Shape were in that house at that time. Laurie fled, and returned to the house where the two children were sleeping in the same bed…awkward! She is pursued by, apparently, only one of the two killers…at least, that is how it appears. In reality, I think the other killer crossed the street as well, only we didn’t see him. He did not enter the house. While Michael went in after Laurie…

Immediately upon getting into the house, Laurie tries to use the phone. No doubt to call the police…or the army! The phone was working fine 12 minutes ago. If both Michael and The Shape were in the house across the street, Michael did not have time to cut the phone line and be waiting behind the couch, only to get knitting-needled. I think that The Shape also crossed the street, ahead of Michael, and he found the phoneline and cut it. Then…he waited outside. And I think there is good evidence of this.

There is a small trick that helps lead to the Supernatural Michael Myth. Both Tommy, and Dr. Loomis, refer to Michael as The Boogeyman! Generally speaking, The Boogeyman is an evil spirit being, but common representations of him do not feature a mask. A mask is meant to hide one’s identity, which the Boogeyman doesn’t need to do. Michael and The Shape wear masks because after they accomplish their goal, they intended to remain at large. The Boogeyman is in no risk of being arrested, tried, and sent to the asylum to become Dr. Loomis’s newest, Black-Eyed Patient. If masked men commit the murder, then there is no proof for Loomis’s assertion that Michael Myers was responsible. But it was him! He’s pure evil! He has black eyes! Where’s the proof? The guy who did it was wearing a mask! I believe that calling Michael…The Boogeyman, is meant to move us toward the Supernatural Michael Myers distraction. Michael, who does enter the house, ends up getting more than he bargained for in his tussle with Laurie…

First, she sticks a knitting-needle in his neck. Ouch! He drops to the floor behind the couch, only to pop back up again. Depending upon where in the neck he was stabbed, the wound need not be fatal…at least at that point, particularly if the needle basically penetrated muscle, and not an artery.

Then there is the scene in the upstairs closet. I have commented upon how much difficulty Michael has getting in through the very flimsy accordion doors. That is a clear contrast to how easy it was for The Shape to punch through the interior, kitchen door. When he finally bashes through, the light comes on. But he flails around, and the light goes out.

Michael then appears to fumble for the light. I find it hard to believe that The Boogeyman, or Pazuzu, or even Lamashtu would need a closet light to get at a girl who is only 3 feet away and trapped in the corner. But then!

Laurie lunges with an unraveled hanger and stabs Michael in the eye. Some people just never get a break! Once again, Michael drops to the ground…

I could have knocked that whole set of doors down in a few moments…I think. Michael lies on the floor as Laurie exits the closet. Super cool shot alert!

Of course, we never see where in the eye Michael is stabbed, but depending upon where that is, it is not necessarily a fatal wound. On a couple of occasions, Laurie ends up with a large knife. Yet, she never stabs Michael with it. A giant knife sticking out of his chest as he sits up, or a hatchet well embedded in the stop of his head as he sits up…far more convincing that Michael is supernatural. He attacks again, but…

Doc Loomis shows up thinking it’s the Wild, Wild, West.

Go ahead, Michael…make our day!

Loomis then shoots Michael seven times…

…sending Michael crashing through a window, and falling from a height of two stories, landing on his back. I was, however, unaware that there was a 7-shot revolver! Loomis turns around to speak to Laurie, then looks back out the window, and cue the music!

A knitting-needle is one thing…a hanger is one thing…but seven shots to the chest at close range and a two story fall to the ground, landing on his back…that is another thing altogether. If he can get up after that, then he is truly Supernatural Michael Myers! Too bad! I don’t believe for a minute that he did get up. It will be remembered that The Shape, who cut the phone line, has been hanging around outside the house. And The Shape is strong! After Michael lands on the front yard…look at how dark the area of the yard is where Michael landed. It’s pitch black…can you see anything that might be in those shadows? No. The Shape ran out and pulled Michael Myers away…probably into the bushes. And Michael? Well, he’s dead. So the end of the first movie features the death of Michael Myers. I repeat…avoid the trap of interpreting the first movie in light of sequels. Although I must say that the idea of The Shape returning to kill Laurie seems the most likely sequel if we are allowed to make the proper sequel. The Shape, with his boiler-suit and the same creepy mask, turns up in Haddonfield next year. We think he’s Michael, because we don’t know about the two killers in the first film. And if he’s Michael, then he clearly is a Malevolent Spirit Being who can’t be killed. Then…at the end…Laurie kills him, removes the mask, and the theater goes dead silent as the man behind the mask is not Michael Myers. The sequel to that will be retelling the first story and revealing the truth about what happened in 1963. He goes after Laurie, but not because she is his Secret Sister, but merely to finish what he and Michael set out to do the previous year. They killed the resurrected Judith Myers, and it would be another 15 years before Judith Myers would be sixteen years old again. But Laurie was the only, living witness to the shocking events of October 31, 1978. And so…she had to die.

In conclusion, I will say that Halloween is no slasher film. It really isn’t even a horror movie. Michael has a motive and is not a serial killer. What Halloween is…or was, seeing how sequels have destroyed an awesome story, is a murder mystery. It also a test of perception along the lines of The Exorcist, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. But morbid people like morbid things, and miss the real story completely. Of course, that’s not what everyone thinks. If lame sequels brought us Michael Myers the Supernatural Black-Eyes Slasher, I have nonetheless endeavored to bring forth a totally different Michael Myers. A tragic Michael Myers…ultimately a product of the dysfunctional family dynamic of post-modern America. And so he has a most singular purpose, one that is nothing like that to be found in the minds of movie fans who pay little attention to the story-line and the numerous clues to be found within it. Michael and The Shape are doomed to repeat the events of October 31, 1963 every sixteen years as they seek to kill the Resurrected Judith Myers. Wait! I’m wrong about that…Michael died on October 31, 1978…leaving only The Shape to pursue their singular purpose. I am still shocked to find out how badly I misunderstood a movie that I will now place among the Greatest Subliminal Movies of the Subliminal Cinematic Golden Age…A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Halloween, and The Shining. I will be publishing essays on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining very soon. What A Clockwork Orange and The Shining have in common is that the story-lines of these masterpieces of the Cinematic Art were not destroyed by unfortunate sequels. Alas, the story-lines of The Exorcist and Halloween were. Actually, that’s not quite true…the original story-lines are still there and not too hard to find if one uses one's Powers of Perception. You may find yourself being wrong. But being wrong is a lot more fun than being right! Of course, you have to set aside all you think you know…and then study the details carefully. Just don’t blame me if you end up looking in the mirror only to see the Devil’s Eyes staring back at you…black or otherwise.