E5: Halloween (1978)

To celebrate Teen Horror Cast's first Halloween, we watched... Halloween! A 1978 genre classic that set the tone for slasher films for decades to come and established a raft of horror tropes, John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween launched Jamie Lee Curtis' career as the "Scream Queen."

We talk about our favorite parts of the movie, what Michael Myers and Socrates have in common, finding your inner Laurie Strode, and much more!

Content warning: gore, violence, substance use, and death!

Transcript

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Yeah, but should we record now? For real? Yeah, okay. No more pretend recording. Let's do real recording. Okay. And ready? I'm going to give you a countdown 543

Hello, and welcome to episode five of the teen horror cast, where we watch and discuss horror movies from a team's perspective. I'm your host sage, and I'm joined by my co host and unpaid intern, my dad.

Hi everybody. Ethan here to celebrate teen horror casts first Halloween. This week we watched drumroll please. Halloween.

Yeah. Right. I liked it. Spoiler video content warning.

Yes. So this content warning is just for general like, Gore. There's not that much of it. Honestly, in this movie.

Yeah, actually. Free. Also big old spoiler warning as always, we're just going to totally spoil the heck out of this film.

Yeah. So I'm sure a lot of people I've seen it. Yeah.

I don't really feel like you need to worry about that. Like I feel like Yeah. Depends so many sequels to like, if at this point, you're not kind of clued into the fact that there's like a dealer, mask killer. Then, you know,

I'm sure everyone listening to this has heard the name Michael Myers. Probably sound Yeah. Okay. With that, let's go to the summary.

The film starts on Halloween night of 1963 in the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a point of view shot peeps in at a window at two teens making out on a couch. You're alone aren't we? Michael's around someplace. Let's go upstairs, okay. After they disappear upstairs to the bedroom, the point of view shot walks upwards, puts on a mask and with a point of view partially obscured by the mask murders the girl in a surprisingly bloodless scene, I'll be at the first scene with some partial nudity.

The 1963 scene concludes with the killer being unmasked by his parents. I six year old Michael Myers, who has just killed his older sister.

Cut to 1978, the year of the film release and the next scene, and we meet psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis, played by Donald Pleasance, in a tough as nails nurse, played by Nancy chambers on their way to pick up now 21 year old Michael Myers for a court appearance.

serious about it, aren't you? Yeah. Actually never want them to get out. And why are we taking him off to Hardin County if you're just going on because that is the law.

Arriving at night in the pouring rain. Residents of this facility wander like ghosts in their white hospital gowns illuminated poorly by the car's headlights. In this haunted house mill you things take a turn for the violent when Michael Myers attacks the nurse and steals the car they arrived in. He's gone he's gone from the evil has gone.

Back in the daylight world of 1978 Haddonfield, we see a quiet Midwestern town getting ready for Halloween. Laurie strode played by a fresh face to Jamie Lee Curtis is headed to school. On her way there she runs into the boys she will babysit later that night. Same time, same place. Watch the monster movies. Sure. Can we make popcorn? But it's not just told me that sponsor the killer that the film's credits only referred to as the shape, now dressed in stolen coveralls and a strange white mask watches her from a distance

calling this a haunted house. He said awful stuff happened there once Lonnie

lamb probably won't get out of the sixth grade. I gotta go see tonight.

by Laurie begins to see the shape around town first noticing him while she was at school discussing the nature of fate, man answer the question.

Costin wrote that fate was somehow related only to religion. Whereas Samuels felt that well if it was like a natural element like earth, air, fire and water.

That's right Samuels definitely personified. Meanwhile, Tommy is getting hassled by some bullies who attempt to scare him, telling him the boogey man is going to get him. Laurie meets up with their friends on the way home. A couple of bold brash girls that clearly take no guff. Lori's meekness is offset by their confidence.

Hey, jerk, speed kills

a joke

any someday going into deep trouble

spotting the shape lurking behind a bush she's alarmed but he disappears among the houses and the day continues toward Halloween night.

Look where the bush

I don't see anything. When you yelled at

several isn't.

Dr. Loomis is on the trail of Michael Myers and visits the graveyard where his sister's buried. There he finds that the headstone has been stolen. And he is certain that Michael has returned to Haddonfield to kill again. 19. Judith Meyers came home as Laurie and her friend, any daughter of the local county sheriff, drive to their babysitting jobs for the night. They smoke a joint in the car and talk about boys. While Laurie is content to just talk, and he is more active about things and soon we'll be making plans to meet up with their own boyfriend.

You know, you could ask somebody? Sure you could. All you have to do is go up to somebody and say, you want to go to the dance.

You could do that I could.

Well, you could ask Nick Baxter. He'd go out with you rather than train with Ben trimmer. I see, do you think about things like that?

Dr. Loomis, and Andy's father Sheriff Leigh Brackett played by Charles ciphers check out the old Myers house where they find a dead dog which Loomis takes to be evidence of Myers presence. Still warm? He wouldn't do that. This isn't any baby sitting across the street. Pawns off her charge little Lindsay Wallace onto Laurie in order that anything go pick up her boyfriend for a tourist. things take a turn for the worse. When Annie climbs into her car where the shape is waiting in the backseat. he strangles her a murder without apparent motivation or meaning, and only one of many to occur that night.

Meanwhile, the third member of their clique, Linda, played by PJ Souls is on her way to the Wallace's house at Amy's invitation in order to hook up with her own boyfriend.

totally dark.

After discovering the house empty and making quick use of the wall as his bedroom. That couple is dispatched by Michael with a kitchen knife. The signature weapon we will see throughout the remainder of the film.

sensing something amiss next door Laurie strode heads over to check on her friend Annie.

Alright, meatheads jokes over my nanny, no, most definitely stopping funny no cut it out. There she

discovers a gruesome Tableau and he's body arranged on the bed with Judith Myers headstone propped up at her head.

Laurie screams as she finds Linda and her boyfriend had been stuffed into the closet. Myers attacks her but she flees and escapes the house he has trapped her in.

Fleeing back to Thomas house, she puts the children in a room upstairs and then faces down the shape as he attacks her again with a knife, stabbing him in the neck with a knitting needle by her only a little time as he ineluctably resumes his lumbering stalking of her through the house. She hides in a closet and finally confronts him with his own weapon, stabbing him with a knife. Even then, the shape again rises to attacker when she and the audience thinks he has finally died, only to succumb to Dr. Loomis gun and a fall from a Second Story balcony

peering over the edge Luma seems unsurprised that the shape has fled, apparently still alive into Halloween night. As a matter of fact, it was

right on, all right. Oh, yeah, that was a, I don't know, it seems like a really simple movie in a lot of ways. But that was kind of a complicated summary, wasn't it?

Um, yeah. And it might seem simple. I'm sure that at the time yeah, there were a lot more kind of surprises and there would be today because I think it's kind of set the

sure stage game like an arcade. Yeah, and

yeah, slasher and a lot of tropes. Right. Um, whether on purpose or not. So, right. Okay, what were your overall impressions of this movie?

overall impressions? My overall impressions. First of all, I did not see this when I was a kid I only saw later on when I was an adult. And I was really struck by the fact that it just seems like a, like the slasher film. You know, like, all the things that we think of as like slasher film tropes, that you just kind of absorb through other movies and through like, yeah, just random cultural stuff. Be like they all come from this movie, or they're all packaged in this movie. And, and of course, the other like, very famous like slasher movie prior to this was psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah. And of course, Jamie Lee Curtis, his mother started that. So, yeah, that's, that was my initial impression. I have some other thoughts. But what about you? What's your first like, top thought?

Okay, so before I watched this movie, my idea of it was like, I associated it with things like Nightmare on Elm Street. Right? And yeah, psycho things like that. So it was it was up there with those which I have not seen Nightmare on Elm Street or psycho. Okay, so I really, my expectations for this were like, simultaneously very high. And also like, I had nothing to judge it against. So

like, we have episode six and seven now. laid out in front of Yeah,

but yeah, so I was trying to remember what a big impact this movie had on like the horror industry, while also remembering that it might seem a little like not mundane, but like, it's been done before to me, but at the time it had it right. Like at the time, this was really revolutionary. And I think it should still be seen in that light. Like, we should remember how new it was to

look to our roots. Exactly. Yeah. You know, what's amazing is like this movie had an incredibly low budget. I mean, the budget seems microscopic today. But even back then it was like not a big budget. total budget was like $300,000. Yeah, I'm sure it was 200 to 300. Yeah. And that was split between two of the funders or executive producers, one of whom came up with the original idea for the story didn't write the script, but like, came up with like a treatment or something. And originally, it was called the babysitter murders. And then he kind of re crafted that and then pitched it to John Carpenter. Oh, here I have the name. Erwin Yachad lens. He was the executive bruiser that came up with the original idea for the babysitter murders. And then also was like, then he pitched it as no, it's gonna be Halloween, basically. Yeah. And I think part of the reason was the babysitter murders also took place over like, a span of days, because there needed to be like, multiple murders. And it wasn't like the guy could like hop around on like, one night and like, be like, well, let me just find all the babysitter's here, you know, yeah, they needed to have a reason for it to happen on one night. And then he was like, Well, we, you know, we have a bunch of Christmas movies. We do Valentine's Day movies. We don't have any Halloween movie. Yeah, let's just call it Halloween. Yeah, it's I love it. I mean, it's just all like, everything about this feels very, like mythological and kind of like, boiled down to a pure essence. And I think a big part of that is just we had no money.

They had to, I wouldn't say cut a lot of corners. But that's

is kind of what they there were some things they spend money on. Yeah, like

they okay. I think like 10% of their budget was paying Donald Pleasance. Yeah, because right, he was such a big name.

Or big enough, you know, John Carpenter really liked him.

I parent Yeah. Okay. So I listened to we both do to the director's commentary on the movie and John Carpenter kept talking about how at the time he was like, in awe of Donald Pleasance, so much so that he didn't second guess him when I remember what it was. So someone maybe John had written in a scene where Donald Pleasance is talking to his wife, right, who is worried. And then Donald Pleasance is like, no, no, no, I don't want my character to have any sort of like familial relationship or connection. Yeah. Or background. Yeah. And John Carmody was like, Okay, sure. Because he was just like, we he must be right.

Yeah. And, and I got the impression when John Carpenter was saying that, that he might push back against that today. A little bit like, Yeah, but at the same time, everybody in this movie is very much like a kind of an iconic archetype or like, yeah, you know, this, this almost like a cutout version of themselves. You know, like this doctor. He's the one who's just like, obsessed with Michael Myers, and just wants to make sure he never escapes. You know, he had a big shift, where at one point, he's like, Yeah, I spent, I spent, like so many years trying to treat him. And then I spent an equal number of years trying to make sure he never gets out. After I realized, basically, I couldn't treat him so he's gone through some sort of like fundamental shift. Yeah. Okay, overall impressions. Other. Other overall impressions include, for me, John Carpenter, and his approach to filmmaking. This movie talks about evil, right, Michael Myers referred to in this movie only as the shape. We know his name is Michael. We know his his full name is Michael Myers. But nobody refers to him in the movie as Michael Myers. He's just this like looming presence. So he's he is this force of evil. And I think that John Carpenter and Deborah Hill, the screenwriter, the primary screenwriter, and they co they co wrote the screenplay, they were also dating at the time. So I think that they created a script where there are some big ideas like the nature of evil, and I think that's sort of referenced at one point when Laurie strode is in school, and she's like, oh, you know, we're they're talking about a book and the the nature you know, whether or not fate is a fundamental force of nature or not, and I think really what they're presenting is, and hinting at in that scene, and presenting throughout the movie is that evil is, in this film, at least a fundamental force of nature. At the same time, even with those big ideas. I think that John Carpenter is just making a good film like he's a good journeymen filmmaker, right? He like, he's a workman like a workman like filmmaker, he gets in there, and he does the best job possible, given the budget will he'll toss in the soundtrack. Like a note with no extra charge? I'll make an awesome iconic soundtrack. That is amazing. And we'll set the tone for like all sorts of other movies and soundtracks for us to come. He'll do all that in he'll just make sure you have a great like, it's a great fun ride.

Ya know,

that? I guess that's my thought. overall impressions is Yeah, I think that John Carpenter and Deborah Hill put together their brainy people. And they put together a kind of a, there was some big ideas on the scripts that maybe were in the background. But this is really just like a fun house movie. Despite those big ideas,

I agree with that. It's a fun movie that people can enjoy. But there is also an element of like unsettlement, especially at the end, where Michael Myers is appears he has literally gone he is it is implied that he just got up and walked away after being shot and stabbed and thrown off the balcony. He just gets up and walks away, and is still like prowling the night. And it ends right there with like, the shot of the empty ground. Yeah, it's

really disturbing, isn't it? Yeah. And I think, how do they make you feel when you saw that? And how he keeps getting up after these horrific

I felt? Yeah, so there is a part of me that really identifies with Laurie strode, which is good. Like, that's always a good thing in movies, when you identify with the character and you feel what they're feeling. It's like just stab him, you know, kill him, why isn't he dying. And then also, I really really liked the ending, I really value in movies, the element of being able to not just give in to what the audience wants, nothing everything up in it. Sometimes, like in The Blair Witch Project, you it's not like they show the witch on screen ever. And that is something that some of the audience might have wanted, but they don't give you that they don't give you the satisfaction of seeing that.

And the other thing, McCready and childs are just sitting there staring at each other.

Yeah, in the end, like, they probably die. That is something that the viewer has to decide. And I think that is a really valuable skill is being able to infer from what you already have, where you're presented with, and it's something that I think some movies are perhaps losing a little bit.

Well do you know, you know, there's this Gestalt psychology. I don't know if you've ever come across that before but you know, in Gestalt psychology, there's the idea that, say, for instance, like a broken circle has more kind of kind of vitality and motion and movement perceptually Then, then a whole circle a complete circle. Because your brain is filling it in your brain is completing that circle. Yeah, but it's completing it because it's broken, because there's something missing. And in these narratives, when you get to the end of the movie, and it's missing in a way, like something is missing, or something that's incomplete. I feel like there's just so much more you're left with a such a sense of momentum and almost like falling forward into the rest of this, this missing narrative. Yeah. And your brain is going to keep thinking about it. Like, what happened? What if I mean, I find myself coming back and thinking about these movies thinking about the thing, or they're really the thing a lot. But this movie, too, like, like, what happens? Like, did he run off? Does he run off into the woods? Is he dead? Does he run off to die? Does he were enough to live? Is he an

animal, I think it is, in some ways more realistic, because in real life stories do not get wrapped up in a bow and then stashed away, they keep going and one story will feed into another that will like become this whole, you know, it's never ending. And that's what it can be when the story is left loose like that. It can be whatever you want it to

be. Yeah, you know, this or my reminds me also of going back to the name that they use just the shape. And the way that they ended like that, where it's just like, how is it that this guy can just keep coming back up after he has been stabbed and killed and like, literally got a knitting needle through his neck? I mean, you know, any, any human being would just think they would just die. But he's, he's not a human. He's the shape, right? Yeah, he's a person. But one other thing that I thought about from the end of the movie, is you see the credits roll and you see the name, you know, you're looking to see like, what, what's this guy's name? Again, it's not Michael Myers. In Halloween. It's just the shape. And we've mentioned that already. That reminded me of how Socrates defines color he the defines it or gets a student to define it as color is that which accompanies shape, right? That's pretty. Like it's like an indirect definition, right? Yeah. But not that color doesn't exist. Independently of that, like there is sort of like there's the Platonic form of color, there's just color. But in terms of our experience, it is that which accompanies shape. And I feel like in this movie, there is evil and evil is predicated as a fundamental force of nature that keeps coming back and recurring, but it is only percept we can only perceive it in the shape of a person. Right like this. Isn't that kind of a vessel? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like there is yes, there is evil, it is just this ambient force. But the way that humans experience evil is through other humans. That is the shape of evil.

Yeah, yeah. Our next classic question is is it turned lights on scary? I would say for this movie. No.

We're not scared at all. Going upstairs. alone in the house. No. on the door. You wouldn't be scared.

I think it's more there are like jumpscares okay, this might just be like personal to me, but like paranormal movies and like scares freak me out. More than Michael mind like a ghost you mean or something? Right? Yeah, like for sure. Michael Myers is like scare like the idea of this being who will kill and kill and kill Yeah, and not die. That is like a scary idea. But it's not something that I would like keep my eye out for in my house.

Yeah, it's definitely a different type of experience of evil and fear. Like I've met people that I think are socio paths. That is scary. And it's scary to to know that those people might be out there in the world, but it's not scary. Like if I see a ghost movie. I will there's a ghost down here in the basement with me. I'm sure you know, like, you know, I'll be like turning the lights on because I am freaked out. The house is haunted. After that movie is over. Yeah, yeah, I'm worried. I'm definitely not worried about like turning the corner and saying Michael Myers. I wonder if that was different in 1978. Like people really were scared of it. Did they? Were they scared of Michael Myers as like a threat? I you know, that's interesting, though, because I grew up in the 70s. So I can give some insight. Yeah, so people were there was a lot of Stranger danger.

That's what I'm just gonna say is, it's still you know, there still is like stranger danger today, but it's like you leave your kids with like a babysitter, or even not with a babysitter. And it's like,

well, we all also we all have phones now. Yeah. And there was a lot more time when you were out of touch with people.

Yeah, it's like this feeling of being suspended alone. Yeah. Like a little droplet of water. And also, okay, I don't know if this was a thing in like the 70s and 80s. But it's just something I think a lot about around Halloween just because of how like how big of a thing it was in school. word of it is like, like the classic, like razor blades in apple.

Oh, yeah, people were freaked out about that stuff for sure. Early 80s People were free. Yeah. And I mean, I think probably based on no incidents or one incident or like, you know, not it was not like a common thing. Sweeping nation. Yes. You know, this was not a big trend or anything like that. But people freaked out about that kind of stuff. For sure. Yeah, Halloween is also such a weird transgressive holiday, right, like, it's this holiday, literally where people are dressing up and you know, running around a night and it's kind of a it's like a, you know, so many of our other holidays are overtly overtly not not historically, necessarily, but overtly Christianized in America. Definitely. Not Halloween, like Halloween is and it feels primitive, and scary.

And the thing is, like fun a lot. Yeah, a lot of like, holidays are like family oriented. It's warm and fuzzy, and you're spending time with your loved ones and being happy. Yeah, Halloween is like you're running around in like, the middle of the night with this like bag and going up to random people's doors and asking for candy.

I mean, it sounds bananas. Right?

I know if if I had you learned. I know if I hadn't heard of Halloween ever. And someone explained it to me. I bet you made that up, didn't you?

And then they give you candy. Yeah.

The also the origins of Halloween are so crazy. Like kids would do genuinely like awful stuff. Yeah. Right. Put people in danger. Like they move the steps of people's houses. So they want actual tricks, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, like Trick or treat. They came from adults being like, how can we stop these kids from like putting our lives in danger is to give them food

meddling kids. Yeah. So silly. Amazing what people would put up with, I guess. Yeah.

And so I don't know. It's just kind of funny to me. Yeah. Okay, so do you have any favorite scenes?

Favorite scenes? I do. I do. Let's see. I think that my favorite scenes are probably for me. It's the washing machine scene. Yeah. Where Annie like she spills some butter. I think from popcorn onto her clothes. And she has to be she was like immediately she goes out to wash your clothes. For your fingers. Islands. This is Paul. Washing clothes. By the way, the actors in this movie.

From like, JC

JC Penney, like L'Oreal Laurie. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis bought hers at JC Penney. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So I mean, they, which looks legit, right? They look like yeah, like what regular high school girls they would be wearing. Anyhow, so she you know, any goes to wash her clothes. And it's I like that scene. Because it's a little it's weird. It's mundane. It's a mundane domestic activity. That becomes really tense. And, and it's also your left, kind of, you're like watching you're like, why are the washing machines out in this outbuilding? Yeah,

there? We did mention that they're in some separate, like shack or shed,

you know, it's not really an Illinois because in Illinois, you almost certainly would have a basement and this is in LA and I guess they're maybe not basements are not as common or I don't know, maybe?

I don't know. Yeah, it's funny. And there's like this whole little like stone path through like the backyard or to get to this weird little shed. And I

think part of that was also just to get her into this like separate place, physically. And you see the shape looming outside the window at one point. That seems also really beautifully lit.

I love that scene because of the lighting. Yeah. And she like

can't turn the lights on at one point. And, you know, they they had almost no lighting equipment for this movie. I heard it I think it was Deborah Hill on the commentary said that they could fit all the lights into a VW van, which is not a large van. You can tell like they just made this conscious decision like well, we can't afford lighting. But boy can we afford shadows. So a they shoot a lot in the daytime. And then B they really make heavy use of kind of like chiaroscuro kind of style lighting like a painting term, which means light and shadow. Yeah, there's a lot of like kind of very dramatic classic painting style lighting throughout the film. And that scene is definitely a highlight for me.

I notice that there is not many different like color values in the black in the dark parts of it probably just because of like equipment they had back. Yeah, but it i really like it because when something is dark, it's just completely black. Yeah, there's no kind of grayish tones to it. It's just black and you can't see what's going on in that part of the screen, which is good to add. To the feeling of enclosure and yeah,

yeah. And that's used to great effect, like at the end where Michael Myers or the shape looms out of his closet. Oh my god, see this big black rectangle next door, you're like, Ooh, that looks dangerous. And they just like, slowly increase the light on his face.

Yeah. And then you see him. So it kind of goes the effect of him like stepping out of the shadows. And he's just right there. And you can only see his face to just the mask. Not his body or anything. And it's really

scary. Yeah. Okay, so what about you? What's your favorite scene?

So it's the one where the girls Laurie and her friends are walking home from school. As usual, I have nothing to do. It's your own fault. And I don't feel a bit sorry for you.

Hey, Linda, Laurie. Why didn't you wait for me? We did 15 minutes. It totally never show that's not true. Here I am.

I'm never smiling again.

Paul dragged me into the boys locker room

exploring uncharted territory, totally charged, just Jurco got caught throwing

eggs. And so it seems kind of like, mundane, but I really like it because it's really genuine. It shows what real high school students might be thinking about at that time. And still, you know, it's still kind of relevant today. You know, like, it's really it's kind of heartwarming, like to see these friends together. And it's something I really don't like in movies is when friends are always super nice to each other. Because that's not how friends aren't. Right? Yeah. If you're really good friends with them, you're gonna like poke fun at them a little bit. Yeah. And that's what they do.

I think, you know, Deborah Hill mentions that too, in the director's commentary. At one point, she's like, this is how, you know, teenage girls really are with each other. And I think that shows how important it was to have a woman write this script. Yeah. Yeah. I love that scene to that. That's such a great scene. Yeah. And and, like, you know, they all come off as like, really together. I think. I mean, yes, Laurie is like kind of a little bit of a wallflower. And Linda is funny. And he is like a total firecracker. She's, she's definitely always kind of needling people. But I really like her as a character. Yeah, yeah, that's a great scene

somebody else I wanted to talk about is the final girl, which is like, pretty big trope now that I I like it. It's cool.

We almost named this podcast the final girl cast till we find other two other podcasts. But yeah. Do you want to describe what the final girl means?

It is a girl. Yeah. Who is the only one standing after the rest of her friends have been like gruesomely murdered by this thing or person out to get them. Yeah, and she is the final girl who finally defeats the thing. The shape in this case for strode. Some examples of this are Ripley in Alien Yeah. Laurie strode? Yeah, Laurie strode in Halloween, she is the final girl because her friends three of her friends are killed by the shape and she has to be the one who stands up to him. A big critique of this movie after it came out was that it was preaching the idea that only like a virgin who is like, morally correct. And, you know, like the pinnacle of morality, girly girl, only, only someone like that could survive an attack like this. But in the director's commentary, they state that that was not their intention for the movie, the intention, like the reason that they did that was to kind of portray that Laurie is kind of withdrawn and careful and maybe a little scared of, like normal teenage things. And out of all of her friends. She's the one who's the most like that, you know, she's reserved and always does her homework and is scared of telling the boys she likes that she likes him. Yeah, the point of her standing up to the shape is overcoming that overcoming her timidness. And there's a scene in the movie that I think is very representative of her character, which is where she agrees to take care of Lindsay Wallace, who was being looked after by Annie because Annie wants to go me her boyfriend. She agrees to do that. She doesn't have to do that. There's nothing like obligating her to

do that. Well, she's coerced into it a little bit Bayani? Yes. Like I'll tell that guy that you don't want to meet him or something.

Yeah, but you know, she does it I think mostly because she just wants she wants me to go and yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Seeing that really reminded me of myself sort of just reminds me of like something kinda like something I would do, which I am working on. Yeah, working at being more assertive, or Yeah, I just sometimes I, I put someone else's needs like over mine sort of or out, convince myself that, oh, I'm able to help this person, it's fine if I have to, like not do something that I was planning to do on my own or, you know, I have to give us something that I had, you know, so

do you want to change that? Yes,

I do. But it's, it's hard. It is really hard. And I think that's kind of Lori's character arc.

I agree. Find your inner Lori's

kind of like, standing up for herself. Yeah, even if it is like for her life. And she's forced to do it. She does it.

She doesn't. Yeah. And she actually does it. We're like she nobody else was able to write she's, she's the one Yeah, to do it.

And that's really, I think, in the director's commentary they were talking about that was really the message they were trying to convey.

Yeah, I don't look at these other kids, especially after hearing the commentary. And they don't really mention this directly, but I don't look at them as the bad kids that get with them as much as just sort of like normal teen kids. I mean, they're doing bad, especially from 1978. They're out there like they're drinking. They're smoking pot. They're sleeping with each other all that is a completely unsurprising High School behavior and 78 Guaranteed. Yeah, so you know, don't do drugs, kids. But those types of things were not I don't think necessarily shocking. I just think that they were like being the normal teens. And Lori was being the outlier. Yeah. Reserved, like being the wallflower. Yeah. And she has to not only does she have to become a sort of, she actually has to kind of like, I don't want to say she doesn't become she doesn't embrace evil at all. But she has to pick up. She has to use the weapons that evil employs. Yeah, right. Literally picking up. Yeah, and

sometimes that's necessary. Yeah.

I'm on fire with fire. Yeah. Yes, my co host is making a wrap up symbol now. Yeah. So let's let's bring it in for laning. Phase

two to sum up this movie. It is a fun and witty tale of personal growth and the inherent pneus of evil in our world.

I like that. You know, that's like one of those summaries you read where it's like a little misleading. It's a fun, uplifting tale of personal growth and evil. Yeah, I liked it. Definitely go see it. It's a classic. It informs the next, you know, I don't know 30 years of filmmaking when it comes to slasher films, and horror films in general. They have made a million sequels which I actually haven't seen any of. I've never seen any of the Halloween sequels. So maybe that's something that you embarrassed. I you know, I'm not I just just never got around to it. And maybe by the time I started to think about watching Halloween, there were so many sequels and they seem to like branch off in different directions. Yeah, like, I'm not really sure where to jump in there. I think I'm gonna do some research. And maybe we can do a marathon. Okay. All right. Well, that's Episode Five Halloween 1978.

I hope you guys enjoyed. You can follow us at teen horror cast on Twitter and Instagram, where you will receive updates about our podcast episodes in such

thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Bye bye Oh my goodness gracious. I'm having stabbing pains. Where? From Michael Myers.

Are you getting stabbed? Yes. So that explains it.

That's called the method sheet behind you. Oh my god.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai