Halloween (1978) - An Extraordinary Film on an Ordinary Day / The Bed

Sort of similar to Friday the 13^th, I decided for many of the horror franchises I’d try to use 2020 to collect and document my final blog thoughts on each of them (except maybe “Child’s Play” and “Hellraiser”). When I came home from work today, just a January Monday, ordinary, nothing extraordinary and far from Halloween season, I just thought I’d watch Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978). And I realized how nice it was to not feel obligated to wait and view in October. I had planned on a big October this year but I came to realization early January that I’d really like to take the year—sort of a year in review—and give 2020 over to the familiar titles this blog is often dedicated a bit too much to. I wanted to give plenty of attention and then close the book on films from franchises that have definitely been mainstays, because I thoroughly enjoy them. As I was watching “Halloween” tonight, I liked that this was just a day, in one of those months of the year that carries absolutely no significance to me. It isn’t like I haven’t had plenty of Octobers in the past, including the celebrated 31^st, spent loyally to the film. So it was freeing, I guess for lack of a better term, to just pull the 35^th Anniversary Blu from my library and give it a go on a boring Monday evening.

I guess I hadn’t given a particular moment much thought despite seeing it over and over again. Michael grabs the clown mask after his sister’s teenage boyfriend quickly got off when the two had sex up in her room. Michael enters her room after the boyfriend leaves. Stopping here a moment, a brief glimpse over and Michael’s sister’s boyfriend would have seen little Mikey before exiting the home. His eyes were stilled fixed upward at the room he just got quickly laid. And the voluptuous sister, brushing through her hair, top off, bra off, Michael looks over at her bed, where the teenage couple had sex, and that is when the strikes with the knife commence. I guess I hadn’t really dwelled on it because it was fast. Michael looking over through the eyes of the clown mask, seeing the crumpled sheets/blankets/bedspread and it was as if a trigger went off. The knife comes down, you hear the stabs, and a body dumps into the floor. Never before had Michael ever been violent. And now his sister was dead. Of course, the scene is iconic. It is burned into many of “Halloween” fans’ brains, our memories. The house, Michael’s lurking, his entrance, moving about, waiting until the sex was over, and his ascent upstairs after securing the mask and knife. The POV, the unconscionable murder, and when fleeing his home, parents awaiting him…Carpenter, Hill, and Cundy set the stage. The shocking reveal of the blank-eyed boy in clown costume with a bloody butcher knife in his hand, the camera pulling way back as the Carpenter music sets the chilly tone. All of this replays in your mind if you have been a “Halloween” fan as long as many of us have. But that one brief look to the bed seemed to be a moment that happens but never really meant that much to me any other time than tonight.