Posts of Blood: Halloween

A classic…. A tradition…. Halloween always gets played a number of times over the month of October. John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors and writers, what he was able to do with this movie is amazing. The fear, supernatural and psychological horror with out use to much gore is fantastic. Halloween was far less bloody and graphic than some of its endless sequels and reboots. The story follows Michael Myers, who kills his parents as a child and is institutionalized. He escapes as an adult, and continues his killing spree.

The original script, titled “The Babysitter Murders”, had the events take place over the space of several days. It was a budgetary decision to change the script to have everything happen on the same day (doing this reduced the number of costume changes and locations required) and it was decided that Halloween, the scariest night of the year, was the perfect night for this to happen.

In the documentary short, ‘Halloween’ Unmasked 2000 (1999), revealed that the crew had chosen two masks for Michael Myers to decide on. The first was a Don Post Emmett Kelly smiling clown mask that they put frizzy red hair on. This was an homage to how he killed his sister, Judith, in a clown costume. They tested it out and it appeared very demented and creepy. The other was a 1975 Captain James T. Kirk mask that was purchased for around a dollar. It had the eyebrows and sideburns ripped off, the face was painted fish belly white, and the hair was spray painted brown, and the eyes were opened up more. They tested out the Kirk mask and the crew decided that it was much more creepy because it was emotionless. This became the Michael Myers mask.

Now the Halloween remake made by Rob Zombie I rather enjoyed. I like both of them in fact. Of course I am a big Rob Zombie fan as well and House of 1000 Corpses is amazing. I thought Rob brought a lot to the table and turned up the brutal violence and gore with Mike Myers. I remember sitting in the theater and when Myers stabbed one of his victims, you can hear the bone crunch/breaking with each hit. Showing the power and hatred/insanity of Myers. I know there is a torn fan base between the Carpenter’s Halloween and Zombie’s Halloween. That is fine.