Bonus Episode: Halloween II (with Carmelita Valdez McKoy)

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
you
you
Hello and welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followedin the wake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Ayanakone and with me are my co-hosts Rob Lemorgous.

(00:24):
And Chris, I'm going to give a big revelation right now.
Yeah, it turns out I'm your brother.
This whole time!
No.
Not Justin Beam, I'm Ben Tramer.
Watch out for that first step into the street.

(00:44):
Just survive.
Look both ways before you-
and I chose the blonde Captain Kirk mask.
Today is the first of two bonus episodes we'll be doing this month looking at two moviesfrom one of the longest, most successful horror franchises of all time, Halloween.
A few years ago, we did a Get Me Another Halloween series in which we explored the wave ofslasher movies that followed John Carpenter's 1978 film about an escaped mental patient

(01:14):
named Michael Myers who returns to his hometown 15 years after murdering his sister onHalloween night.
and targets a group of babysitters for a killing spree.
Halloween is an all-time classic, and if I don't say so myself, I highly recommendchecking out our Get Me Another Halloween series if you have not done so already.

(01:35):
But what we didn't explore in that series were any of the Halloween sequels, and wethought it was about time to rectify that.
And to help us in our efforts, we're very excited to welcome back to the program our goodfriend, Carmelita Valdez-McCoy.
Welcome back, Carmelita.
Hi friends, I'm so happy to be back.
We are thrilled to have you back.

(01:55):
Carmelita was a guest on our last series, Get Me Another Jaws, talking about thefascinating 1977 film Orca.
And we had such a great time.
We wanted to bring her back to talk about Halloween.
Carmelita, let's just start out and we can all kind of chime in on this.
What are your feelings on Halloween?
What is your experience with the Halloween series?

(02:17):
So it's kind of funny.
My very first horror movie, I was way too young.
Like I'm not even school age yet.
Right.
I saw Carpenter's Halloween.
I have very vivid memories of certain scenes.
I got it.
Laurie in the closet.

(02:38):
Oh my God.
I remember bare breasts.
Yeah.
Apparently, this is the part I don't remember that my mother had to recount to me later.
I was too scared to go trick or treating in 1983.
Oh, wow.
Because I had seen Halloween and was too scared to go.
So very consequential film in my film loving history.

(03:04):
I love Carpenter's Halloween.
And I mean, I'll just say this out the gate.
I love Halloween, too.
think we all love Holic.
I have been watching this movie since I was young and I reckon we'll talk about it it'sgot some flaws.
It's not a perfect film like the first one, but I still love it no matter what.

(03:24):
just, one of those things that from a young, you know, I can't remember when I first sawit.
It was certainly on video, but like, I just remember those VHS boxes in the video.
So for Halloween one, two, and three, they had such distinct like the skull in the
in the Jack-o-lantern and Halloween 2.
Like even before I was old enough to be allowed to rent those movies, and I probably stillwatch them for too young, I just remember those boxes.

(03:50):
They were so prominent back in the video store.
Yeah, no, definitely.
So now here's where it gets interesting.
And I didn't know at the time that Carpenter had intended for two to be the end of thisMichael Myers, Laurie Strode storyline.
I didn't know that.
But up until just a few years ago, I had never watched another Halloween sequel.

(04:15):
Correct.
my goodness!
Because this was complete for me.
This was a complete story.
And so I think I would little bits and pieces, right?
Like on TV.
Right.
I mean, this is such a cultural touchstone.
The Halloween franchise and Michael Myers as a villain.
Oh, you know that I was aware of the other films, but it was kind of like, oh, but I mean,I was happy.

(04:37):
I was good with where I was at.
And so in recent years, I have now seen all of them.
Excellent.
Including the Rob Zombie remake.
yeah, that's there.
They're the Rob Zombie ones are are interested.
That's a that's a that's another podcast and entirely like will at some point we'll get tothe Rob Zombie ones because it's a it's a it's a very unusual thing.

(05:01):
Yeah, I I love this series, although I fully recognize that it's got peaks and valleys,peaks and valleys.
Let's put it that way.
You know, there's there's there's good Halloween movies.
There's not so good ones.
This is one of the good ones, even despite
the flaws that it may have.
Agreed.
So over the next two episodes, we'll be exploring

(05:22):
Chris, weren't you going to ask all of us that question?
Well, nobody seemed to jump in, so feel free.
It's her turn!
Justin, what are your thoughts and feelings on Halloween?
go to Rob first.
Rob, what are your thoughts and feelings?
What's your personal Halloween history?

(05:45):
Yeah, I, um I have not, I have very terrible personal memory.
I can't tell you what my first horror movie was.
But I can say that Halloween was early on for sure.
It is you.
I don't believe in favorite, like a favorite movie or a favorite horror movie or whatever.

(06:05):
But sure, if you're going to be a jerk and press me about that, ah would probably say
Halloween is my favorite horror movie, even though I don't have a favorite horror moviebecause I
think that's fair.
I mean, that's a fair answer and I understand what you're saying.
It's hard to pick one.
Like one, you know.

(06:26):
my little scare babies, how can I pick just one?
like this is clearly in the top tier.
Like Halloween, the original Halloween is clearly in the top tier.
There's no question.
Absolutely.
And you know, I enjoy many of the Halloween movies.
have seen the ones that I have seen.
have all I've seen all of them multiple times.

(06:48):
sure.
but the other notable fact that I will just leave, leave it with here is, uh, I still havenot seen resurrection.
That's okay.
Yeah.
Really?
man.
I'm saving it for when I need to pick me up, baby.
Treat treat, motherfucker.

(07:11):
That's the line.
Oh, well, Chris, uh my history with Halloween goes back a long way.
Actually, it was fifth grade.
was Halloween night.
My friend Matt Bortz, who was the only kid I knew with parents cool enough to allow him tosubscribe to Fango, Fangoria magazine.
He would bring them to me in school and pass them along like contraband when he was donereading them.

(07:35):
so I could take them home and read through them and get them back to him.
So he was like my gateway to
Nice.
was, you know.
First one's free,
And that and I remember going trick or treating in his neighborhood on Halloween night,but he was really adamant about getting home in time.
And I think it was maybe on USA.

(07:55):
I want to say USA.
But Halloween to this movie was going to be playing and he was insistent on getting hometo see it in time because the Halloween movies were his favorite.
Right.
And I hadn't seen any of them at this point.
Fifth grade.
So that's pretty young.
But uh anyway, and so we.
I remember I was dressed as like a punk rocker.
was like Sid Vicious and I had this hairspray.

(08:18):
I remember the smell of the aquanet that my mom layered my hair with to get it stand upstraight.
And sitting there in the basement of Matt's house on Brentwood Drive in Cedar Rapids,Iowa, just fucking terrified beyond all terror.
And by the time my dad came to get me, I didn't even want to walk out to the car.

(08:39):
I wanted dad to come in and get me.
I was so
so scared by it.
And then fast forward many years and a lot of other adventures, the Halloween franchise iswhat got me into the film business.
Yeah, I was writing for Fangoria and Famous Monsters and other magazines and stuff.
And I encountered Malik Akkad, who's the son of Mustafa, the producer.

(09:02):
uh Malik and I became fast friends and hit it off.
we initially came together because we co-founded a nonprofit together called the ScareFoundation.
But
Then it grew into me working for Trancas and Compass International, and I became the vicepresident of New Media there.
And so I was in charge of international distribution, all of the video releases around theworld of one, four, and five, which are the three that Trancas Compass owns outright.

(09:33):
so Halloween really took the absolute primary role in my life with work.
at that point.
it was while I was there, Halloween four and five had not yet made the move from DVD toBlu-ray and Blu-ray was really blowing up.
And we still had a couple of years left on our Anchor Bay deal.

(09:55):
And so we I got Halloween four and five underway on Blu-ray.
And that became the first two special features that I produced because I did thecommentary.
I got Dwight Little, the director, on four.
Right.
And then on five, I got Don Shanks who played Michael in five and there had never been aDwight Little commentary and there had never been a Michael Myers commentary.

(10:18):
And so those were the first two special features that I ever did.
And it was those two tracks that brought me to the attention of Shout Factory.
And that's when Shout brought me on and the floodgates to everything else opened at thatpoint.
So that's the really condensed version of this story that, but
Halloween has, I mean, it's always been my favorite horror franchise and I will never,went to a press screening of H2O in Chicago.

(10:45):
wow.
I got into this cause through anyway, it was amazing.
Like I've never been in a room where the audience, some people were standing up andapplauding at that moment where Lori and Michael come face to face in that window and
that.
Like the round window, I can see it.
Yeah.
And the whole place erupted into applause and people were standing up and cheering andstuff.

(11:10):
And then oh the last bit of my tie to the Halloween, well, two more bits.
In 2012, when I was with Trankus, at the time, there was supposed to be a sequel to Rob'ssecond Halloween.
oh
about it for a while, like it was gonna be a 3D thing, I think.
Yeah, yeah.

(11:30):
And that ended up not happening.
I'll just I'll simplify that story by saying Weinstein's.
so but people were really bummed.
They were really bummed.
And so I proposed putting the original back in theaters and this predates fathom eventsand the re-releases and stuff that you see today that are so common that we kind of take

(11:51):
for granted.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is playing this weekend.
Like that was not even a thing then.
Sure.
And then I had the hardest time.
finding anyone to partner with to put that back in theaters.
This is 2012.
It's not that long ago.
No.
But all these, I thought maybe we would have to partner with a theater chain.
Like what if we just get AMC on board and then put it in all the AMC theaters?

(12:14):
AMC says the movie's too old, people aren't gonna want this.
Incredible.
And then I go, and I went around the loop with these different theater chains and nobodywanted to play ball.
But this guy, Mike Ankener,
Was working for a company called Screen Vision.
Now, if you know that name at the beginning of movies.
Yeah, I don't think there's prominent as they were, but they would have like trivia thatyou'd answer for your.

(12:37):
Yes.
OK.
The easiest trivia questions of all time.
Yeah, Indiana, what?
And the Temple of Doom.
Yeah.
So screen vision was in every theater they had across the board.
mean, just about every chain participated with them.
They were omnipresent.
This Mike Ankener there, who is was such a huge Halloween fan.

(12:59):
He immediately he reached out to me once he heard that I was sure that we were shoppingthis thing around.
And then Mike and I put the whole thing together.
And the only thing that they had is a
as an edict was that they wanted to have some, because this is an untested thing at thistime, right?
Re-releasing older movies on a wide basis like this.
And so they wanted what they called added value uh feature to go with the movie.

(13:26):
And so what that became was my first movie that I ever directed, which is called You Can'tKill the Boogie Man.
And that ran around the world because we ended up not just doing North America withHalloween.
It had never had proper release in theaters overseas anywhere.
It had only been like, you know, four walled or one off showings and stuff.
But but we got it to play everywhere in the world.

(13:48):
And before it was this 15 minute documentary I made about the cultural presence of theboogeyman around the world and how that translates into Michael Myers in horror cinema and
especially in like the West here.
And I'll never forget the other theatrical.
Halloween moment that H2O was unforgettable, but going to the Chinese theater in LA onopening night of Halloween 1978 in 2012 and sitting there and I got my buddy Tim Edwards.

(14:20):
did the composing.
I brought my buddy Andrew Dvov in who was the G in the Wishmaster film.
Sure.
Lost.
He's the guy with the eye patch and the hatch and everything.
She will show up in at least one movie in our Die Hard series.
He will.
And he has one of the greatest voices in all of cinema ever.
Yeah.
Just an amazing voice.
I'll never forget sitting in the recording booth when we were doing the documentary and Ihave photos and I have video.

(14:47):
I was so nerding out.
My buddy Tim is recording who also did the score from the documentary.
My script is up on this big screen and there's Andy sitting there on the stool and I mean,just I can't even do it, but he's like.
Michael Myers.
I'm going to blow up my mic.
But just hearing his voice through these headphones sitting there reading this script wasjust this most pinch me moment.

(15:14):
was absolutely incredible.
then.
Fantastic.
To be sitting at the Chinese and have the lights go down and up comes the title thing formy bit.
Oh, it's just.
That's a dream.
That's the dream come true my goodness
So cool.
Really was.
And John and Carpenter and I have done a ton of stuff over the years.
He ended up coming on board for our charity.

(15:36):
And so the history is long.
And then bookending that.
And I'm sorry for taking so long with my answer here.
But the there's a lot.
But the album that I have coming out in October for Phantom Light Keeper, Phantom LightKeeper is it's all instrumental stuff like surf.
It's like this heavy surf's weirdness.

(15:58):
And I decided to cap it off.
sort of wanted to sort of say farewell to Halloween with covering the Halloween theme.
And so and your copies are on the way, guys.
Thank you again for that.
But that last track, and I haven't been too loud about it yet, because I just want peopleto sort of find it when they get the album.
But the last track is is my rowdy version of the Halloween theme.

(16:22):
Well, that is fantastic.
Properly licensed and everything.
But so that's sort of me.
in a way saying farewell.
was at one point supposed to be, I did start writing the official book on the Halloweenfranchise.
And it was, it was at that time that I left Trancas and sort of moved on and that didn'tend up happening, but I still hear about it a lot.

(16:43):
And uh so I wanted to acknowledge the history that I've had with this and really whatMalik in that franchise had given me, which is the whole career that I have ultimately.
all goes back to
Halloween night in fifth grade dressed as Sid Vicious on the floor in my friend'sbasement, copy of Fangoria on my hands and just sitting in stone silence watching the

(17:04):
movie we're about to discuss because I had never seen anything so terrifying.
It changed your life!
Yeah, absolutely did.
Yeah, we say that about a lot of things, right?
But how many can we really say that about?
Like it shifted the planets for me.
uh
Fantastic.
can't remember what I was for Halloween at very like those god Sid Vicious.

(17:30):
never could have I think I might have been ET one year like 82, 83.
That sounds right.
Like as
I only remember it because of the hairspray smell.
It's a sense memory.
It's like a Proustian thing, you know, where if you smell Aquanet, all of sudden you findyourself rocketed back to 1983 and you're a kid again.

(17:52):
You never forget the smell of aquanet because you're breathing it in the fumes and thenit's on your head.
Yep.
You know.
it's everywhere, too.
It's on your shirt.
It's on your hands.
on your.
And yeah.
But so if I ever end up in Branson, I'm to be in sensory overload because I uh go to apoison concert or something like that.
Well, with all of that now said, I think it's time to get in today's film.

(18:16):
From 1981, this is Halloween II.
Universal Pictures presents Halloween II.
More of the night he came home.

(18:49):
reason that wasn't even remotely human.
oh I've been trigger treated to death tonight.
don't know what death is.
Janet, go tell Mr.
Garrett we're having trouble with the phone.

(19:12):
place to hide.
uh He will always find you.
What's this?
It's a Celtic word.
It means the Lord of the Dead.
The original Halloween hit movie screens across America in October of 1978, a smash hit.

(19:35):
It became the highest grossing independent movie ever made to that point, a title that itwould hold for like 20 years until Blair Witch Project, I believe.
And it launched the slasher film subgenre as we know it.
So modern conventional wisdom would suggest that a sequel would be inevitable.

(19:57):
But in the late 1970s, that wasn't necessarily the case.
I mean, obviously horror movie sequels are not new.
You go back to the 30s and 40s, you know, the whole series of Universal Monster sequels,Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, you would later have Hammer Horror in the 50s and 60s,
featuring many of those same characters.

(20:17):
But as the slasher genre was really in its early days, so by extension was the slashersequel.
And one of the interesting things, I think, watching this movie, there's a sense of thefilmmakers figuring out how do we do this?

(20:38):
Because Carpenter and Hill didn't have a mile to follow, they are in the process ofcreating that.
No, definitely.
they didn't like they didn't intend for this.
They really had no intention.
They made that first movie intending for that to be a complete movie.
I mean, there hadn't been, there weren't a lot of, it's not like now.
I mean, it's just the fact that Halloween II and Friday the 13th part II, as far as theslasher boom, both come out in 81.

(21:06):
So it's really not like, yeah, there's a ton, I mean, I guess there had been Exorcist II acouple of years earlier.
That's a movie we'll talk about on the show at some point, my God.
ah You know, it's just, wasn't,
There wasn't the model and they are making it up.
And I would say the script level for Carpenter and Hill, think admirably so.

(21:27):
They make many, many decisions in this where they are not rerunning Halloween.
And I think that that leads to some interesting things that also, which we will get to,also many fans, you know, I think rub against that because they did just want a redo of
Halloween.
Plenty of people did.

(21:48):
So it's interesting.
I think there are varying effects for those choices.
it's, admirable that they weren't just remaking the same damn movie.
What I love is that you really can watch and I do.
I still love these movies so much and you can put one and two back to back and it feelslike the same film.

(22:10):
really does.
you could do, someone could do a cut where you just went right into it.
You cut out the credits, you cut out the little previously on Halloween at the beginning,not previously on, but like I love how they start at Rocky style where they start it with
the end scene of the last movie.
It's, which I actually really love.
Well, it's all on it's all on the same night, which is another thing that not a lot ofsequels do.

(22:34):
I think the Friday the 13th films early on, the first few of them did a decent job ofpicking up right after the events of the one prior, especially when you get from like two
to three.
That's the same day, the same night you're seeing the ambulance drive away at thebeginning of three.
And everything.
I mean, so there's a cohesion there, but it's rare in franchises that a movie just picksup right where the last one literally

(23:00):
left off and to have that happen in a way that maintains the feel and it's a differentdirector.
Yeah.
So I just think it's kind of remarkable that they were able to pretty seamlessly connectthe vibe and the feel and the overall look and the use of so much shadow and pools of
light and silence and a lot of the things that makes Halloween work so well carry forwardinto a movie that is very different than its predecessor.

(23:28):
Yeah, I agree.
mean, look of it, part of that is the fact that Dean Cundy came back as thecinematographer.
He actually turned down poltergeist in order to do Halloween too, because he felt loyaltyto Carpenter and Debra Hill.
so again, whatever flaws this movie might have, it looks fantastic.
The use of darkness and shadow and all this stuff is just absolutely fantastic.

(23:53):
and the director, Rick Rosenthal, uh he's stated that he's studied that original film sothat he could match the house style, if you will.
And it is a skill that, you know, not every director can have.
And he put it to good use.
He's had a very, very long TV career where exactly, you know, looking at the house style.

(24:18):
So it's interesting from that angle, too.
And he's a great, great guy.
Yeah, he is.
nice.
It's always nice to hear.
So I want to a little bit of backstory about how Halloween 2 came to be because there wasit wasn't like there were no plans to make Halloween 2 initially.
when you know, when Halloween grosses 70 million dollars on a budget of three hundredthousand, there's no way there's not going to be another.

(24:42):
So as the story goes, producer Erwin Jablons tried to convince Carpenter to return for asecond film.
But Carpenter had another movie he wanted to make called
The Fog, a movie that I also really love.
Jablons talked to Carpenter.
Carpenter agreed to make two movies with him.
First The Fog and then Halloween II.

(25:02):
But before the deal could be formalized, Avco Embassy Pictures head Bob Raimi kind ofswooped in and poached The Fog.
And then Jablons sued Carpenter and Raimi and the case was settled with Avco Embassygetting The Fog.
and Carpenter contracted to work on Halloween II for Yoblins.

(25:23):
So all of this kind of comes about with these machinations.
Apparently, Yoblins and Remy had had a conversation on the plane to Khan, and then Remyhad kind of gotten a hold of the rights to the fog.
It's a very kind of Byzantine tale of studio politics.

(25:44):
Carpenter's always been very open about there was no more story to tell.
He felt that it was done.
He didn't need more of this.
so that's why the shifts in storyline happened because I'm sure you'll get there, but heneeded something.
interesting because that ending of the original Halloween feels on the one hand it feelslike it could be a cliffhanger on the other hand it feels like the perfect ending like it

(26:11):
function either.
Boogieman.
yeah.
You know he shoots him falls off the balcony and he's gone.
Yeah.
So the question of course then became what would the second film be about?
Now apparently one idea was to jump ahead a few years with Laurie Strode
as a graduate student being pursued by Michael Myers in a high-rise apartment building,which would have given it a very different setting from the small town set of the first

(26:41):
film.
Like that's a whole other thing.
And it's reminiscent of a TV movie that John Carpenter made in 1977 called Someone'sWatching Me, which involves a woman being stalked in a high-rise apartment building.
Eventually they put that aside and Carpenter and Hill made the decision to have the sequel
pick up immediately after the end of the first film and continue the story of the sameHalloween night.

(27:07):
I think it's fascinating because it's one of the most interesting and pivotal decisionsfor this movie.
And it's one that has advantages and drawbacks as we're soon going to see.
What I like about this is that it's the opportunity for an audience to see the mythologysort of unfurling in a town.
Yeah.
And we don't get a lot of that.

(27:28):
There is that in the Friday the 13th films, but it's usually around a campfire as peopleare recounting the tale or like sleepaway camp to where they're doing the same thing.
Sure.
But here you're seeing it in real time as an John is so good about including.
TV reports, radio things happening in his movies that help feed the story.

(27:50):
here you're seeing not only that, but there's a consistency to the news reporting that'shappening.
And then you start to hear that as we're going to get to the nurses talking about whatthey heard was happening.
So the town isn't in panic because no one knows anything's happened yet.
This is happening in real time.
a few hours.
I tried to chart out like what time it was because they occasionally mention what time itis and I would say that by the time, you know, it's like 1130 by the time they get to the

(28:18):
school in that scene there.
like this is, still Halloween night.
Like all of this is, it almost feels like it's real time.
It's not, I'm sure it's not quite, but it has that feeling of it.
But again, I also think there's drawbacks to the same night thing.
There's some interesting, we'll get to that.
They had to have Jamie Lee Curtis in that wig for the whole film.

(28:40):
The biggest continuity shift is that wig.
my God.
So most of the cast would return, including Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, DonaldPleasence as Michael Myers' doctor, who is hunting him down, Charles Cyphers as nurse
bracket.
Charles Cyphers as sheriff bracket and Nancy Stevens as nurse Marion Chambers.

(29:04):
They're also joined by Lance Guest, Pamela Shoup Susan, Hunter von Lear and Leo Rossi asBud.
What?
One of the most interesting, unique characters in
Amazing grace!
dear lord.
uh Mick Castle did not return as the shape.

(29:25):
was already, his directing career had already begun, but he was replaced by stuntcoordinator Dick Warlock.
Another person who didn't exactly return to their original role was John Carpenter, whowhile he would co-write and co-produce with Debra Hill and compose the music, would not
direct.
Apparently Rick Rosenthal was represented by the same agent as Carpenter, which was how...

(29:46):
one of the ways that that connection happened that he got the gig.
And apparently they were thinking about making this movie in 3D, but ultimately decidedagainst it, which is probably for the best.
In addition, for Halloween II, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was brought intoco-finance and a deal was made for Universal Pictures to distribute the film, which is

(30:10):
weird.
Now that I stop and think about it, Carmelina, you were here for Orca.
And that was a Dino De Laurentiis film.
And now for Halloween 2 and 3, you're our De Laurentiis regular now.
Please and thank you.
That man was responsible for so many, bringing so many amazing movies to life, theprojects that he got behind.

(30:33):
So I'll take it.
hey, if we ever do Barbarella, I don't know what it'll be for, but if we ever doBarbarella, you're there.
Yes.
yeah, Barbarella.
I love it.
Love it.
Love it.
I even meaning to rewatch it.
I got the 4K.
I got to take a look at that.
I to break that open.
So we open here with something a little different from John Carpenter's iconic Halloweentheme.

(30:53):
Instead, we open with the 1954 classic Mr.
Sandman sung by the cordettes.
And it's so memorable at the beginning of this movie that I forget it's not at thebeginning of the first film too.
Oh, and then, you know, you have like this, this,
moment like you you basically you begin with the climax of the previous film it's likewhat the rocky sequels do and i love it there oh

(31:21):
perfect and for that time, it's like, you know, people don't have VCRs yet.
Nope.
Like, not, not very common.
No, like I think my family, we got our first VCR in 84.
We were 83.
I remember it was when we moved and we got it when we were leaving.
We didn't open it till we were at our new house.
And so you just would have seen it if you went and saw it in the movie theater, you wouldhave seen Halloween there.

(31:46):
And maybe if people had like cable, but not everywhere in the country had cable or HBO.
oh So, yeah, you needed to have that refresher to to get people to think, OK, how did thelast one end?
Yeah.
Just another thing about the beginning here and the reuse of the footage.
And I believe that I said almost this exact same thing during the Friday series.

(32:08):
If you want to study how the score will completely change a film because this footage atthe end of Halloween and in context, but with the score that's there, it is so tense and
scary.
here, you know, it is.
not meant to be that.
is set up.
And the music kind of reflects that.

(32:30):
It's, there's a little more, it just feels like there's a little more like energyanticipation, like get ready, cause you're about to go on, on this ride we're showing you.
it's, you know, again, no value judgment, but it's just very, very different from how thatstuff plays at the end of the first one.
Well, like in the original Halloween, there's that great moment and we, know, obviouslyMichael Myers sits up, know, Laurie Strode's in the foreground.

(32:56):
She thinks he's killed him and Michael Myers sits up and what Carpenter does, and it's sobrilliant, is to not have the music come in until after Michael has already set up and
turned his head.
So it doesn't telegraph what's, it's like, if you're not watching behind her, you mightnot see it instantly.
Here it plays a little differently with the way the music

(33:17):
comes in because everybody knows what's going to happen already.
I also want to mention that there are little edits.
Like for example, the shot where you get at least a decent look at Michael's face is notin the opening of Halloween 2.
Like they cut a little quick.
It's real interesting, those little changes here and there.

(33:40):
As in the first movie, Loomis shoots Michael multiple times.
He falls off the balcony and a moment later looks
Loomis looks down and he's gone.
So this is where Halloween 2 keeps going.
Like instead of just kind of cutting to those random, the shots of like various places,here you have Loomis rushing outside and he confirms that Michael has vanished, although

(34:02):
there is blood on the lawn.
And we get that great exchange with the neighbor who's like, I've been trick or treated todeath tonight.
this Donald Pleasence gives these lines.
He delivers these lines so well.
You don't know what death is.
Right into the...
Cue the theme.

(34:23):
It's so, it's so good.
God.
Like add Donald Pleasance, A, one of my favorite character actors of all time.
And my all time favorite Columbo guest murderer, I will add, in my favorite episode ofColumbo.
I think the best, I don't know if we're ever gonna get there.
If we continue revisiting the Halloween series, that would be amazing.

(34:44):
But I think my favorite Loomis moment, there's so many good, he's great.
He is great.
no matter what.
But in part.
I knew you were going to say four because he's so terrific in four.
There's there's a part of four where he is traveling, basically hitchhiking back toHaddonfield.
yeah.
And the gas station has blown up and everything.

(35:05):
And this preacher, Reverend Sayre, ends up picking him up in this ramshackle pickup truck.
I love and it's the same the same character playing Reverend Sayre played the hobo in PeeWee's Big Adventure when Pee Wee ends up on the train and the guy is singing and Pee Wee
can't handle it.
He drives off the guy.
So he's

(35:26):
He gets into the key being Loomis gets into this guy's and the Reverend Sayre looks at himand goes, Oh, you're hunting it, ain't you?
I can see it playing Presley's blue suede shoes.
You're hunting it.
And then they have this bonding moment and Reverend Sayre offers them a poll on his.

(35:47):
And Loomis does it and then Sayre starts singing and you see Loomis look over at him witha smile and it's the only moment.
that he gets in this whole franchise to be anything other than panicked and just losinghis mind with intensity and fear and trying to wrangle people to believe in what he's

(36:07):
saying.
There's this moment of levity for him and it exists in one scene in one of these movies.
And it is that scene in four.
A, that is a wonderful scene, know, but I want to mention another, he has one othermoment, and it's one of my favorite Maluma's moments from the first movie, where he spends

(36:28):
a lot of that first movie watching over the Myers house.
and Owen the Bush is-
Lonnie, get your ass away from there!
That's right.
And then there's this moment of self-satisfaction where he smiles to himself before thesheriff comes up and startles the shit out of him.
But like this smile that he gives is so great.

(36:50):
Let me give you my pitch.
Rob, you're the writer among us.
My pitch for Halloween, and I've heard that it's been bandied about that there might be aTV series or something.
You know how these things are always announced and nothing ever happens.
I think the most fascinating thing that could be done with this franchise at this point isa series in the style of Hannibal that's about Loomis's early years.

(37:15):
Yeah, Love it.
Imagine it all leading up to
Halloween night in 1978.
And that can be the series finale.
Yeah.
Cause he watched Michael for years.
And so, but I would love for him to have almost like a cold check kind of let's whatconvinced him that evil can be manifested in such a real, very visceral way.

(37:36):
And who are these other patients?
That's interesting.
could be limitless.
And you only need to really use a couple of characters from this franchise to make thathappen.
I'd watch it.
I'd be here.
The episode because
you're talking about, Chris, that moment in the bushes, it says so much about him.
Yeah.
Like what a prankster he is that he also finds joy in taunting children and which whichhas escalated to like Six Flags horror coaster level in part five.

(38:03):
Oh, my God.
Most terrifying thing in that movie because of how he he terrorized he terrorizes littleJamie the whole movie.
I mean, worse than Michael in a lot of ways.
But he's for being so central to a franchise.
Right.
He's in all of these, all of the original run of the film.
Paid homage and H2O and beyond.
We know so little about him.

(38:25):
We really do.
How did this English psychiatrist come to be working in Illinois?
Right, right.
is a blank canvas that I think could endless possibilities.
Yeah, well, and when we in Halloween 78 and then in this film, it's like, is just so, he'sat 11, right?

(38:46):
Yeah.
He's like almost raving.
And you can just tell there's a lot of history here throughout his many years of trying totreat and then to keep Michael Myers under lock and key.
And the way he says it to indicates that there's a real depth to his understanding of thiswhen he's when he talks in that first film About what he sees in Michael's eyes.

(39:11):
Yeah, that's when he says, you know the darkest eyes the devil's eyes and You're thinkingmen and then when and then they added that TV footage to that film too for the longer cut
for television
I rewatched the extended version of it this past week, which I hadn't seen in a while.
Which is more Loomis.

(39:31):
It's Loomis to the hospital board.
It's Michael in his room and Loomis actually having a, not a conversation, but talking toMichael.
Yeah, Michael's not saying anything, but yeah, exactly.
That's as close as we get to the history here.
And I just crave that.
Yeah, I see it.
I absolutely see it.

(39:51):
I may have one other Halloween pitch, but I'll save that for next week.
Ooh.
But yeah, so we move into a very similar opening credits sequence to the first film,except with the jack-o'-lantern and obviously the amazing music.
But in this case, as we push into the jack-o'-lantern, the pumpkin cracks open.

(40:16):
And there is an image of the skull on the inside and it is fantastic.
It just, again, it makes me think of that VHS cover that was, that I saw in the videostore with the jack-o-lantern skull thing.
It was so distinct and so memorable and just, you know, sticks in my head.

(40:37):
Like I, there's whole swathes of my life that I've completely forgotten, but I remembergoing to the video store and seeing those, those boxes on the shelf.
My goodness.
It was like going to an art gallery.
That's how I've always described it to people who didn't get a chance to live it is thatwe were really what they would say is blind renting blind buying now the covers sold us.

(40:58):
remember Dead Pit of all movies, which is not a good movie.
But if you remember the cover for it, it had that sort of what do they call that?
Like when there's a map and it's raised.
What?
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
know what you're talking about,
Is that a boss?
Yes.
It's like a 3D.
The monster is kind of poking out and it had eyes that lit up when you pushed a button onthe front of the box.

(41:20):
You might remember Jack Frost had the lenticular cover.
Yeah.
He's peaceful smiling snowman.
You move one step to your right and it's this ghoulish monster.
I just missed the days of that.
And now half the time when you look up one of these movies, when someone like Netflixpicks it up, they don't even have the right.
description of the movie in there.
They'll have a picture from a sequel that it is something.

(41:42):
It's just a mess now.
And I am glad that we got to grow up at a time when we got to go in these places and justtake all that in.
Because what an amazing way, what an amazing path of discovery without also having thevoices of millions of people dissuading you from seeing things or pressuring you into
seeing things.
It's like we just picked up what looked cool.

(42:03):
I mean, it's the same thing with books.
I mean, I don't know how many books I've bought because I was like, that looks like aninteresting cover.
OK.
And I'll read the jacket and be like, well, that seems all right.
Like some of my favorite books, literally was it was the cover that drew me in when, youknow, again, when it's the same thing, it's it's there's a reason why album art is such uh

(42:24):
an important thing.
And I feel like it's kind of lost now, you know, and or at least not as not as it it oncewas because it's a little
You know, iTunes logo thing, icon thing.
art and that actually kind of happened around H2O with the Miramax and Dimension stuff.
It just became a bunch of floating heads.

(42:45):
yeah, was all floating heads.
90s was all floating heads, you know?
oh
yeah it's the art of the poster is largely lost like when I was doing the cover for myalbum I put so much into thought into it and there's this.
that cover is terrific.
That cover is fantastic.
Thank you.
Well, man, I'm so honored that I had had this from this photographer in Nova Scotia, NikkiNarc is her name, and she takes these just gorgeous pictures.

(43:09):
She travels all around the world.
And I've had this picture hanging on my wall forever for years and years and years.
And I just kept returning.
I'm like, man, I just want something like that.
And I'm like, why don't I'm fucking I'm to reach out to her and see.
And then she was like, oh, my gosh, that would be so cool.
And so I'm so honored that
That is the cover, but it just seemed right for that.

(43:34):
so I think it's worth putting that kind of thought into the presentation of whateveryou're doing, no matter how good it is, whatever you've made.
But man, you got to have something that that has the vibe and that sets the tone.
And I think to your point about this cover artwork, we knew Michael Myers already.
Right.
We knew what that first film was.

(43:55):
The sinister nature of that very simple image.
because it starts very much the same, but then there's an extra layer that you're peelingback with the skull.
One other note about the credits, I wanted to mention in the first film, Donald Pleasencewas the only actor whose name came before the title, and now it's Donald Pleasence and

(44:19):
Jamie Lee Curtis.
You know, as well it should be, just to be clear.
I'm in favor of that decision.
So then we have this early sequence with Michael Myers roaming around Haddonfield in thefirst person, much like the very beginning of the first Halloween where it's Michael going
around his own house.

(44:40):
There's like a group of trick-or-treaters down one street.
And one of my favorite moments where Michael watches as like the down the, like it's along shot down a street.
of as the sheriff is picking up Dr.
Loomis and we hear him shouting, I shot him six times.
I shot him six times.

(45:00):
And it's just, I just love it.
I love how when Michael sees Loomis down the street, a ways away, he pulls over a littlebit behind a garage as if to avoid being seen.
And it's the most human thing that Michael Myers does in this movie is that first personshot where he kind of, I just did it kind of like, kind of, but I realized this is a

(45:28):
podcast.
can't see me doing it.
I'm, I'm, you know, kind of moving to this.
like, like even he knows he doesn't want to get caught.
no, he's just getting started.
He's not done.
And he had been what's interesting about what set that whole thing up before he got tothat alley, which geographically, if you go to South Pasadena now where this stuff was
shot, right, the Myers house where they moved it to and where it's permanently stationed,it's on the historic register and stuff.

(45:55):
When they shot the first one, it was an abandoned house.
Right, but uh they found out that it was like a home that had been in Pasadena for like100 years.
And then they had to preserve it because was like, that was a historical, know, wasbecause it was old.
And then it was like, yeah, and it was also used in Halloween.
Oh my God, you guys, there's what's crazy about South Pasadena in what was it?

(46:18):
2013.
I worked with the another crazy, crazy idea that I had.
wanted to, I worked for about, it probably took seven months in total to convince the cityof South Pasadena to name October 31st, John Carpenter day.
And it happened.
We got it to happen and we had a ceremony and they did it.

(46:40):
big proclamation thing, the mayor was there, John came and spoke, it was really amazing.
we, but when I was work, when I was going in first, especially in the beginning, going tocouncil meetings there, and presenting this, they thought I was just mad.
They had the the council had no clue, they knew that a lot of movies have been shot there.

(47:01):
sure it's close to LA it's in the it's in the the zone as it is
Yeah, that's fair.
Yeah, mean back to Peewee.
Peewee's house from Peewee's Big Adventures there.
There's Terminator 2, a bunch of stuff was shot there.
Well, it looks like any town USA, right?
Yes, it does.
actual grass in the yards and all the trees are not palm trees.
So I get it.
Arnie's house in Christine is there.

(47:22):
Anyway, the council had no clue how much tourism was actually the result of John andespecially Halloween.
How many people were coming and making this pilgrimage.
And it really is all day every day.
Amazing.
If you go, there's a coffee shop across the street from the house, across the railroadtracks.
And I used to, when I would be out there and I would be in between shoots, I'd go and havecoffee and work on whatever I needed to just with the Myers house there.

(47:46):
And it's a steady stream of people.
buddy, Mike uh Doherty, who made trick or treat and Krampus, his office is in Lori's roomup in the Myers house.
So if you're there and you look to the upper right windows, that's Mike's office.
Sometimes he'll dress up as Michael, come down and take pictures of people and they haveno clue that it's that it's Michael doing it, which is so crazy.

(48:11):
And his name is Michael.
But anyway, back to the point of Halloween to the house that he first goes to the Elrodhouse.
Yeah.
He you'll recall you got nine to the living dead on TV.
Well yeah, was going to mention the horror movie marathon that the characters are watchingthroughout the first movie continues here.
You go from The Thing from Another World to Forbidden Planet and now Night of the LivingDead.

(48:32):
it's just one of those pieces that they do that makes it feel so contiguous, these twomovies.
And everybody's watching it.
It's on in the hospital.
It's on in people's houses.
But there's that sweet couple there where Mrs.
All Rod's making sandwiches.
Yeah.
And she's like, do you want mayonnaise or whatever mustard on your sandwich?
Mayonnaise.
Michael slips in the door and all he wants is the knife.

(48:55):
He's not trying to get anything else.
He's not trying to kill anybody.
He sneaks in, gets that knife and walks out back.
And that alley looks today exactly as it did in the film.
So if you're standing, it was geographically appropriate.
Now it's
two houses down from the Myers house.
So it's actually on the same block now.
Then it was farther away.
But anyway, if you go back and look down that alley, that shot you're talking about, it'sexactly the same.

(49:19):
The markings on the power line, is exactly the same as it was then.
But that just showed something that was different than the first film in that Michaelwasn't just, he wasn't Jason.
He wasn't a killing machine.
snuck in the house.
He didn't harm this couple at all.
She screams, but he's already made his way out the door at that point.

(49:40):
gone by that point because she left a bloody print behind.
And there's that amazing shot.
It's a beautiful shot.
It might be a split diopter shot, I'm not sure, where the husband is like sleeping infront of the television in the extreme foreground.
The wife is in silhouette behind him and then fully lit in the kitchen behind her isMichael and it is so unsettling.

(50:06):
Cause you're dreading every, you just have dread the whole time.
You know what this guy's capable of.
You just don't, you know, and you're right, he just leaves.
if, you know, if he hadn't left the blood there, she would have been like, where did I putthat knife?
But, know, then she's like, And we get news updates.
That's when we get one of our first news updates on the television about the events of thenight and the discovery of the bodies over on Orange Grove, which is the house where, the

(50:35):
street where,
both the Wallace and the Doyle houses are.
It's Orange Grove in Hollywood.
And I guess they kept it as Orange, they called it Orange Grove in the movie, just in casethere was a street sign in there.
Although truth be told, Orange Grove sounds like a street you find in California much morethan Illinois.
It's in South Pasadena.

(50:56):
That's the exit you take.
the Wallace and Doyle houses which are across the street there in Hollywood, I think.
Yeah, they are.
are.
But Orange Grove, get to them, if you're going to the Myers house, if you're goingdowntown, the exit you take off the highway is Orange Grove.
The Doyle and Wallace houses are also on an Orange Grove.

(51:17):
Right.
Because it's California and that's what we call every other street here is Orange Grove.
So he doesn't kill the old couple.
He takes a much greater interest in Alice, the attractive young woman next door.
She's on the phone talking to her friend when she hears her neighbor screaming.

(51:38):
she's very blase about the notion that Mr.
Elrod next door may be beating his wife.
What the heck is
she's, he's, oh, it's, uh, she's always giving him a hard time.
He probably just started beating her.
I'm like, what?
Like I'd be a little more worried if I thought my neighbor was beating his wife.
Like that's, it's just, she's so calm about it.
It's so.

(51:59):
might
And this is a small town, right?
And we see this throughout this film in a way more so than in the first film.
How the way all these people are connected, everyone knows everyone.
Yeah.
Either directly or, that person went to school with my younger brother.
Right.
Or in this case, the neighbor, you know, who knows what this girl has seen from next door,but I'm guessing she's known these people all her life.

(52:30):
You know, the kind of small town, you know people, so you kind of just go by yourassumptions or what you know.
And that helps with the mythology spreading as the night unfolds,
Yes.
I also want to mention the actress who plays Alice, she really looks like Margot Kidderfrom around the same era.
I was like, oh, wow.
Like, that's noticeable.

(52:52):
uh This sequence where Alice, you know, she's on the phone, she's talking to her friend,she thinks she hears something and the door opens silently behind her when she's on the
phone.
It is absolutely terrifying.
uh This was a handful, one of a handful of scenes
shot by John Carpenter during reshoots.

(53:12):
And Michael then just, he pops up in a frame and we get a kill where he stabs this girlwith the knife that he took from the L rods.
It's already more graphic than any of the kills in the first film.
There is a definite escalation in the level of violence from Halloween to Halloween II.
In this era of slash, mean, 1981 was like peak slasher era.

(53:35):
By that point, it had all geared up.
Definitely.
So we go over to the Doyle and Wallace house from the first film where the police are inthe process of finding the bodies.
Laurie Strode is being brought out and taken away in an ambulance.
And to me, this is where we get into, if there's a downside to setting this movie the samenight, it's the position it puts the character of Laurie Strode in for much of the movie.

(54:02):
I mean, in real life, a couple of years had passed and she had.
She'd cut her hair, she had to wear the wig, but more than that, she spent so much of thismovie kind of like unconscious or sedated or in a hospital bed, almost all of it.
And it really doesn't give Jamie Lee Curtis kind of the opportunity to do stuff in the wayshe did in the first

(54:25):
What's funny is it kind of happened again with the David Gordon Green.
Yeah.
Which those I think I mean, we were joking about six also directed by Rosenthal.
I mean, seven.
Eight.
Wait, no, eight.
Eight.
But but yeah, which one?
It's an interesting, the decision to set it the same night is so, there's so much that yougain by it in terms of this continuity with the first film.

(54:50):
But I think the thing you lose is that Laurie has had no chance to process anything fromwhat just happened.
She's basically, like they take her to the hospital, they sedate her, and she's kind oflike in and out of sedation for most of the movie until the very end.
It's kind of like Anaconda.
We were talking about what's his face.

(55:11):
yeah, like Eric Stoltz in Anaconda.
He's just out of it.
He wakes up for one scene, goes back to sleep.
yeah.
That's identified right away.
We're going to have to talk about all of the um unprepared various authority figures andservice workers.
I mean, because that comes up quite a bit, but I will say about the point about Loribeing, you know, she's not sidelined, but definitely because it's the same night as you

(55:41):
were saying, Chris, and she is, she has that, she has the drugs.
She doesn't want to be put under what they do give her.
She has a reaction, but I'll say this.
And this is something that I would kind of play devil's advocate is that I think there's,it gives it this very real feeling.
And so in the scenes where she has to react, it's that much more harrowing because thisis, she feels like a very real person who's in this very vulnerable situation that finds

(56:16):
the strength to
run as best she can to fight back as best she can, even though she's really at adisadvantage.
And she's at an even more disadvantage when Jimmy shows up and doesn't do any, he doesn'tdo any fucking favors for her.
I know.
Jimmy.
Jimmy is useless.
I mean, I like Lance Gaston, I'm a big fan of the last Starfighter.

(56:38):
It's not his fault, but holy shit, that character's written to be useless.
But yeah, that's a good point, like is that she hasn't, if the first film turned into anightmare for her, she has not had a chance to wake up and process that nightmare.
She's still in the midst of it.
And it's not like anything they do.

(57:00):
She would go to the hospital after that kind of thing.
Like they'd probably sedate her.
Like all of the things that happened to Lori, it's what would happen.
It's just, it's a consequence of setting it that same night.
And again, I'm not even saying it's the wrong decision.
I think it's a fascinating decision.
And I think there's a lot of stuff that, you know, that could be debated out of it.

(57:22):
But I think that's a great point.
That's a great point.
to go with all of this.
um This movie, because of that also there are two other big changes from the first one,which is the number of people involved is much, much higher in this.
You get crowds in this movie in a way that you don't in the first one.

(57:43):
And then you also get authorities on board much quicker and in a bigger way.
And even the hospital itself, while it's not necessarily
who have been, uh, you know, sounded the alarm to be on the alert for Michael Myers.
But just that setting, it's so different.

(58:05):
It is an authoritative setting.
Most of the victims in this movie are adults, not teenagers.
You're not isolated.
These are all big differences from the first movie and they're, you know, trying to,again, do something different if...
If it was the first one is you're attacked in your home where you feel safe, but we wereshowing you how vulnerable you are.

(58:26):
This one, it's, uh, you know, it's much more about these institutions that you think willsave you will, will not.
Absolutely.
And the hospital, you know, to your point, Rob, the hospital is another place that you'resupposed to feel cared for and safe.
So it's, and I like that they put her there as opposed to just having her like runningaround the neighborhood or going to hide somewhere else or something like that.

(58:48):
I mean, it.
It's a little more logical that she would end up there.
That's where she would be taken.
If the events of the first movie had happened, that is what would happen.
She'd be taken to the hospital because there could be all kinds of injuries that you don'teven know about.
It all makes sense.
And Haddonfield Memorial Hospital will become, in particular in the second half, theprimary setting for this movie.

(59:14):
And the hospital staff, as you said, Rob, will become our core cast.
We have the two ambulance drivers, Jimmy.
play, you know, who is useless.
And Leo Rossi as Bud, maniac cop two and relentless star Leo Rossi as Bud, the horniesteighties hornball who ever horned.

(59:35):
Such a creep in this movie
my god!
You're late.
Yeah, I know.
I've got to get on the ward.
Hi Jamie.
hi Karen.
See you

(01:00:00):
Days and grays, come sit on my face.
Don't make me cry, I need your pie.
Look, why don't you just shut up, all right?
What are you all revved up about?
Look, it could have been Ziggy, you know?
And could have been your brother, Mark, who pulled out of there.
All right, so what do want me to do?

(01:00:20):
Look, Jimmy, rule number one, never get involved with a patient.
Nurses, that's another story.
But patience is no good, it never works out.
Where you going, college boy?
I'm telling you, listen to old bud.
And according to Rossi, Debra Hill didn't want him cast because he didn't feel that he wasMidwestern enough.

(01:00:42):
Like that, you he's not a, you look at him and you don't think, that guy's from Illinois.
You know, it's like, you he's from the Northeast, which he actually is.
He's from New Jersey.
He's from Trenton, New Jersey.
As the sign says, Trenton makes the world takes.
Yeah
It's a real sign.
uh Yeah, we have a few nurses, including Karen, who's having a fling with Bud, which isnot going to go well for them.

(01:01:08):
uh you know, listen, I'm going to say it.
Maybe it's to his credit, does appear to be concerned with a woman's pleasure, judging bythe songs that he sings.
You
Like, you know, in 1981, that was not as common a thing.
You know, he seems concerned with that.

(01:01:29):
guess that is, you know, if you're gonna say something good about, but I guess that's it.
I also want to point out the moment when the ambulance is arriving with Lori, we have oneof the most memorable things in this movie.
And it's just a little aside bit where a mother is bringing her son into the hospital witha razor blade in his mouth.

(01:01:52):
I love it.
it's so creepy and freak like there were rumors back in the day that people would goaround putting razor blades in candy.
Always check your candy.
You know, that was a thing.
Halloween's a night of danger.
Yes.
yeah.
That's right.
Cause people are going to waste LSD on candy.

(01:02:13):
That's the kid from the fog, by the way.
Is it?
I didn't realize that.
Wow.
that's great.
Yeah, apparently Dino DeLorente has hated this bit with the kid and the razor blade, butCarpenter and Hill were absolutely insistent that it stay.
it's just, leads into this, again, it feeds into this idea that Halloween is a night thatwe play with danger, but it can actually be really dangerous.

(01:02:37):
And I love it.
make a show of it.
Like they really make a point.
At one point, the boy's face is in profile.
So you really see the razor stuck in his mouth.
ah
It's so- Oh God!
And what's funny is that that was such a non that just wasn't a real thing.
Right.
I think it was that one guy who poisoned.

(01:02:58):
He poisoned his kid's friend or something.
I don't remember the whole story like with a pixie stick that had poisoned it or somethinglike that.
It was like one guy and then the whole nation just goes berserk over it.
Looking out about this candy situation.
It is a little weird.
We're going to get into it in the next episode very directly with some dialogue about.

(01:03:20):
The strange custom of having your kids go door to door begging for candy.
It is an odd fucking thing To have strangers give your kids things to eat I mean just allstrangers we would just go house to house as long as we could Were you guys that way just
it was like yeah an endurance test every Halloween to get as far as we could go before wecouldn't walk anymore

(01:03:41):
Absolutely.
yeah, I loved trick or treating.
Yeah, except when I had that ET costume, the aforementioned ET costume, which was so hot.
my God, it was this heavy hot thing my grandmother made and it was like, God, it was like,it would have been great if we were trick or treating in Nome, Alaska.
Sorry.
That's a, that was, that was my own sense memory flashback to, to, to Halloween's past.

(01:04:08):
So I want to mention one other oddity about this movie and I will come back to it severaltimes because I never really thought about it before this viewing.
The Strode's never show up this entire movie despite the fact that their daughter Lorinearly died earlier tonight.
What the hell?

(01:04:29):
hahahahah uh
Like there's some lip service saying, they can't be found.
but the doctor, the drunk doctor was apparently at the same party.
He's still, he's still tanked from that party when he's given, given Laurie an exam.
it's complete, complete failure of authority figures.

(01:04:50):
Generation X was on their own, you know?
Yeah, no, we're still on our own.
Newsflash.
We're still on our own.
The young kids, they ain't coming to save us.
know that now.
We're screwed.
uh So anyway, meanwhile, the search for Michael Myers continues throughout Haddonfield.
We see Loomis and Sheriff Brackett driving around together.

(01:05:11):
What is very odd about this moment is that Brackett is clearly unaware that his daughter,Annie, is dead.
But despite the fact that we already heard news reports saying three bodies werediscovered in the house.
Like you'd think if one of those bodies were the sheriff's daughter, they would let himknow very quickly.
But we have this scene, one of the most memorable scenes in the movie where they're outand there's a guy wearing the same type of mask as Michael Myers and Loomis, holy shit, he

(01:05:41):
is pursuing him.
He is waving a gun like a crazy person.
And the guy...
crosses the street and a cop car slams right into him and man that guy burns up.
Holy shit.
Yes, Loomis has not had formal gun safety training.
That's clear.

(01:06:01):
He does have a permit.
He mentions in the first movie he's got a permit.
Who knows what it took to get a permit?
Right.
Because he, mean, he he's ready to come out blasting and there's like children.
He's pointing that muzzle into a crowd of children yelling, get out of the way.

(01:06:22):
Like that's going to do anything.
He's ready to shoot this person without any kind of clear confirmation that it's even theperson that he's looking for.
Right.
Yeah, he's, he's, he is not fucking around.
Like uh that is for sure.
And, and like, there's a couple of things here.

(01:06:43):
First, the cop car slams into this guy and then slams into like a van and the whole thingblows up.
So this is the type of big explosive stunt that they couldn't afford to do for the firstfilm, but they can now do here.
So that's the first thing is there's an escalation in that regard.
To my crazy eyes, I didn't rewind because I'm also lazy remember, but is, this actuallythis, this right here, the first blonde Michael Myers?

(01:07:12):
I know it's not.
Yeah.
It was, it was like, like the mask, but blonde, right?
It's a little bit like, they're very clever the way they do this because the first timeyou see the guy, you're kind of getting the same perspective of Loomis down the street.
It's the guy turning away and starting to walk away.

(01:07:33):
And there he kind of looks like...
Like he kind of moves like Michael Myers.
He kind of walks like Michael Myers, but then they cut to a shot of him crossing thestreet and it's very clearly not him.
Like the hair on the mask is different.
The clothes are different.
He's carrying a fucking trick or treat bag.

(01:07:53):
So like, and again, I think that that's a really interesting thing to do.
Cause when we're seeing it from Loomis's perspective, you can't really tell.
But then when we get a
A third person perspective, is very clearly not Michael, and I think it's great.
And that only cropped up again and it was by total accident in part four.
Yeah.

(01:08:14):
There's a scene in part four in the school where Loomis and Myers have an encounter andMichael has the has this mask on with blonde hair for some reason.
And I remember when I was doing the commentary with Dwight on that and that moment cameup, I was like, so Dwight, you need to set the record straight.
The fans have been theorizing on this for decades.

(01:08:34):
Can you tell me why this blonde mask is in this scene?
this upcoming scene, he goes, what are you talking about?
And I'm like, what?
I mean, and then it happened and he goes, oh.
You
never noticed that before.
And I'm like, are you kidding?
You didn't notice that?

(01:08:55):
How did you not?
The fans were obsessed with this and there's so many theories about it having ties tocharacter Ben Tramer back to original.
And he goes, no, I don't don't even know why that would have been on set.
have no clue why how that meant.
They must have gone to the truck and grabbed the wrong thing when we were shooting thatnight.
It was probably two in the morning.
But you hear it.
If you listen to that audio commentary on your Blu-ray or 4K, you hear him realize whathad happened in real time.

(01:09:21):
where he's like, I have no clue.
And of course, this young man who's, it's to the movie's credit that they don't try andhold the question of, is this Michael?
That is resolved for the audience fairly quickly, although the characters in the moviewill spend much longer kind of wrestling with that question.

(01:09:42):
But the movie's not pretending.
It's not trying to like, yeah, we're gonna try and lean you on for half an hour that thisMichael Myers might actually be dead.
No, we're not gonna do that.
But it is eventually revealed that the the young man who got got a flame broiled is BenTramer the guy that Laurie expressed a crush on in the first film like holy shit

(01:10:06):
Everything gets taken away from this poor girl.
Even the guy she likes got got killed because all this nonsense It is very dark like ohshe's she's gonna have a terrible November 1st when she finds finally gets out of the you
know
wakes up from all of November 2nd, whenever the drugs wear off, everything is, I mean,shit, her parents still haven't shown up, you know, that's gonna be a thing.

(01:10:30):
But anyway, and I should mention that the burning Michael Meyer, a little bit offoreshadowing for what might happen later, I'm just saying, throwing that out there.
It's hot, baby.
So this is where the sheriff gets the news that the bodies have been found and poorsheriff Brackett.
mean, it's, it's basically going to take him out of the movie.

(01:10:52):
Like we were barely going to see him.
Like he gave him one more time when they're bringing Annie's body out.
Nancy, Nancy Loomis came back to just do that one scene of her dead body being wheeled outof the house, which is great.
Sheriff Brackett's going to be replaced by deputy hunt played by Hunter von Leer, who Iactually also really like.

(01:11:12):
think.
I think that scene with the body in front of the Myers house, it's a pretty poignantscene.
this poor guy holy shit
Yeah, and the crowds gathered around as they would be.
And this is when the town is really first starting to like, wait, something's going on.
This is when the mythology begins.
And worth noting, the reporter is talking to a guy at the very beginning of that scene.

(01:11:36):
Yes, in fact, the first thing you see there and that's Dana Carvey.
is a young Dana Carvey.
I saw that he was in it.
I had to go back and find him.
I was like, you know, thank you.
you, internet, for helping me, uh helping me find it, having searched through the wholemovie.
But yeah.
Yeah.

(01:11:56):
And of course, Loomis is warning the cops that Michael Myers might still be out there.
But to be perfectly honest, you know, maybe that's not a conversation to have standing infront of reporters.
Like.
Good point.
You know, don't maybe, maybe just wait till you're, you're indoors.
Uh, and then we spend time at the hospital.
Jimmy is going to come in and see Lori.

(01:12:17):
Jimmy is the ambulance driver and I guess like his younger brother is friends with Lori.
Uh, I think, that was what he says is something, know, somebody, you know, he knows Lori alittle bit and he is going to spend a lot of time hanging out in Lori's room, despite the
fact that she's heavily sedated.
Well, he wants to give her a Coke.

(01:12:43):
mean, Bud may be coarser, but at least he's not hanging out in patients' rooms trying tocharm them while they're under sedation.
Look it, everyone here is supposed to be working.
There's nobody in the hospital!
so like, it's like she's the only patient I think.
a whole row of babies.
all the ba-
I'm amazed it's taken us this long to get to that point, that this is the emptiesthospital in the history of cinema hospitals.

(01:13:09):
I mean, I know it's a small town.
It is a small town.
If you were to go to a hospital in a small town, let's say, and no matter what time of dayit is, you're not going to find the lights turned off in 90 % of it.
They're just like, this is the darkest hospital.
Well, I mean, they could serve in power, you know?
I guess.
It was the energy crisis of the 1970s.

(01:13:30):
Okay, yeah.
No, I mean, this is a this is a fair point.
It's all Carter's fault.
Yeah, blame Carter.
Yeah, I mean, people have routine gallbladder surgery or something, right?
Like, you would have people there, but we don't see them.
Well, I mean, the only doctor is the drunk doctor they pull out of the party.

(01:13:53):
Which, so he wasn't even planning to be there.
No
He wasn't on that night.
Like, is he the only doctor in town?
Yeah.
I don't know.
didn't grow up in a small town.
You guys grew up in small town Midwest.
Tell me.
What is, is this how it works?
I don't know.
No.
No.

(01:14:14):
It does turn out that there is usually more than a single doctor in a location that wouldhave a hospital that, I mean, you see the size of this hospital.
This is the town with the hospital.
So this is not like a 1000 population town.
Rob, you should have had your dad come on this episode and we could ask him, so watch thismovie with us and then let's talk about the hospital.

(01:14:40):
Yeah.
I knew that.
I knew that Rob's dad was a doctor.
He's a brain surgeon, isn't he?
uh
retired, but yeah, I'm the hospital and.
does it, you know, recreationally.
And always buy candlelight, just like everything in this movie.
I mean, the lighting is amazing and evocative and Dean Cundy's a genius.

(01:15:04):
But here's the thing, and this is what the movie doesn't like, it doesn't waste time with.
Michael is still alive and we have this scene in downtown Haddonfield where, you know,we're introduced to nurse Karen on her way to work.
It also establishes how nearby the hospital is.
And there's a kid walking with a boombox playing a news report saying that Laurie Strode

(01:15:27):
survived and was taken to the hospital.
And we all know kids walk around on Halloween night listening to the news.
That's what kids do, right?
Well, presumably that would have been cut into the rock and roll station with the bull.
You know, jamming NPR on a shoulder mounted boombox.

(01:15:49):
He's also wearing a cowboy hat living in Illinois.
So that's a problem in itself.
Is it?
And a bit of geographic interesting note here that was shot in Sierra Madre.
That's where he bumps into the boombox boy across the street from there and down a littlebit is the church from the fog.
Yes.
And if you were to turn around.
and look at the bar across the street from exactly where they bump into each other.

(01:16:10):
That's the bar from Halloween three, the time Atkins goes.
I was gonna say we're gonna see the same downtown next week, you know, next episode withHalloween 3.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I also wanted to mention that the kid with the boombox is played by Lance Warlock, the sonof Dick Warlock, who is playing Michael Myers in that scene.

(01:16:30):
Well, you know, had to, yeah, absolutely.
But I do really, I really like that they don't hold, they don't try and play the MichaelMyers' dead card for long.
Like it's not
Like they're not trying to fool you.
The movies, you know, we're not even halfway through the movie.
We know Michael Myers is not dead at this point.
He soon pops up behind Karen's car.

(01:16:52):
The whole conversation about driving her friend home seems to exist to explain why Karenin a car and Michael on foot arrive at the hospital at the same time.
I like the shot of Michael in the rear view mirror.
Yeah.
Right there.
That's a eerie thing.
It's another thing where it's like taking something in real life that we all kind of oncein a while.

(01:17:12):
man, I hope there's no one in the backseat.
Yeah.
It's great.
Simple.
Absolutely.
And then we, you know, we go to the, we go to the break room for a little, little action.
is, uh, Bud is smoking a joint in the hospital break room, which seems like that wouldviolate hospital policy.
would think.
Rob, did your dad ever bring that up?

(01:17:32):
Well, little known fact, when it's no light hours in the hospital, anything goes becauseno one can see it happen.
What it must be the perfect time to sneak away with, you know, your coworker to the, tothe therapy room to jump in the hot tub.
We're not there yet, but, but you know, we'll get to the hot tub.

(01:17:54):
Yeah.
I know that Justin's going to have thoughts on this matter because what we've establishedon this show is that I have an obsession with hair and I will comment on hair at any
moment.
Justin has an obsession with, with, with.
sexual activities in standing bodies of water and that's a problem.

(01:18:15):
Absolutely true.
And some of the most vile places you could go are hot tubs anywhere.
They are not filtered like pools the same way.
The water is not replaced like in pools the same way.
it's often not even chlorinated.
so and this is a physical therapy tub in this one, which makes it way worse because it's
not a recreational hot tub.

(01:18:37):
People who are laying in hospital beds for days on end without showering and then theirfilthy asses are inside this thing.
Bedsores, weeping bedsores.
Day in and day out
never thought of that.
That's even worse.
No, I don't want to.
No, I was just...
And if these two are trying to sneak in some nookie, why would they even bother with thehot tub first?

(01:19:01):
Yes.
OK, we just do this now.
We just do this now.
OK, yes, my first thought, but I will say something you brought up, Chris, about um Bud'sinterest or um drive to support female pleasure has recontextualized this for me because

(01:19:23):
my thought was, OK, you want to have sex at work.
Right.
I get it.
There's a thrill.
There's a thrill there and you're stuck there and it sounds like a good time.
It's a bad thing and bad things are fun.
But you are on shift and there are a room full of infants in a NICU that need to besupervised.

(01:19:46):
So let's make it quick, folks.
You know, because you can get the job done and have a good time without completelydisrobing.
Thanks
then getting into the tub.
Maybe spending enough time in the tub that you have to get out to adjust the temperature.
Yes!
I'm sorry.
Am I the only romantic who appreciates foreplay on this podcast?

(01:20:11):
What is wrong with you people?
You've got a hot tub.
You've got some time.
Look, he just came from picking up a victim at a mass killing event where the killerescaped.
He needs a break.
Honestly, you gotta you gotta rely because if there's a call that comes in he's got to berelaxed enough to drive that ambulance Yeah

(01:20:35):
But he also has to be clothed to go on the call.
There is that.
I guess the bone zone takes priority in heavy.
The emptiness of this hospital is the thing I never thought about it before now.
And I'm just like, it's the only patients are Laurie Strode and about half a dozen babies.

(01:20:56):
Like that's it.
No parents.
But the big thing about the sequence is it ties into what you were saying earlier aboutwhen this movie came out, because they're not just keeping up with the Joneses on the
gore.
Right.
They are now keeping up with the Joneses on the nudity and the titillation.
And look, I know the first one had nudity in it, but you it feels so very different tothis nudity.

(01:21:20):
This feels like post.
This is this is this is.
You know, definitely post Friday.
for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
But overall, this movie, I mean, because in the there's more nudity in the original thanin this.
No.
For all at the beginning, you have Judith.
that's true.
I forgot about the sister.
Yeah.
And then the only other time is in the bed.

(01:21:42):
this feels like a leer.
It feels like a leering.
yeah.
This is it is it is much more, you know, I mean, you know what the movie is trying to do.
We're along for the ride on this one.
Right, right.
As opposed to just, it feels more something captured in the moment in the first movie.

(01:22:03):
Yes.
Right.
One of the things I love in the hospital is the way they use the closed circuit cameras.
Like they have the hospital security cameras and occasionally you'll be seeing a scenewhere a monitor is in the frame and you see Michael.
moving through the frame on the the closed circuit TV and it's very unsettling.

(01:22:27):
Jimmy tells Laurie that the man who attacked her and killed her friends was Michael Myers.
And of course, she knows the story of Michael killing his sister at six years old, becauseI'm sure everybody in Haddonfield knows that story.
They should have handled it more carefully.
Oh.

(01:22:48):
Michael Myers.
Michael Myers.
Yeah, he was the guy that was after you.
From the Myers house?
That little kid killed his sister?

(01:23:12):
in a hospital somewhere.
He escaped last night.
How do you know?
It's all over the radio.
Television too.
It's on right now.

(01:23:32):
Why me?
And the answer to that is going to shape this franchise for decades to come.
We'll get to it a little bit, but right from the get-go, it is one of the biggest thingsof this movie that really just sets the arc of this whole series over the course of the
next 40 years.

(01:23:55):
It's incredible.
So we finally get a sense in the hospital that things might be amiss when they realizethat the phones aren't working.
So there's a security guard and so he goes and checks it out and he opens a dumpster andguys he is absolutely tackled by a cat.
He's absolutely manhandled or cat handled.

(01:24:18):
m
okay, you have to think of it this way.
This is pre- people carrying guns everywhere and whatever.
This is more akin to the security at a concert.
That's saying you should have shot the cat.
If you will join me on an adventure, when you go to see a concert in a big arena wherethere's a mob of people, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people in an arena and you're

(01:24:45):
the security of the entire facility hinges on like 80 year old people who have a sidenight gig.
And if violence were to erupt, I'm not sure they would know what to do with that.
I think this is the same.
kind of situation where this guy's like, I'm a part timer.
I'm a whatever.
He's on the night shift at Haddonfield Memorial.

(01:25:07):
He's more of a night watchman.
He's the night watchman.
The night watchman at any company I've ever worked for was not always the sharpest.
Check the doors and windows.
That's it.
You know, that kind of thing.
did a pipe burst.
Right.
What more do need, Chris?
What more do you-
Well, like, he goes in, he goes into like the basement to check around.
And I gotta say, this hospital is just filled with junk.

(01:25:32):
Like, there's so many rooms with just app, like, he opens a door that is so packed withboxes that they literally topple down on him when he opens that door.
What is in there?
Who did that?
Like, it's...
just, mean, he's not gonna have long to contemplate these questions because, you know,Michael Myers is gonna put a hammer through his head.

(01:25:54):
You know, like that, the basement of Haddonfield Memorial is an absolute mess.
We cut, we have a very hard cut to the Ben Tramer who has been flambéed and, know, he's anout of scout.
Honestly.

(01:26:15):
He looks like he looked into the arc of the covenant.
Like it's, you know, it's, it's something and, and they can't identify without a completeset of dental records, which I mean, listen, in 2025, you can get a complete set of dental
records in five minutes, just like you could get plutonium on any corner drug store.

(01:26:35):
But in 1978, that's a little hard to come.
Well, and if if you see how drunk the doctor on call for the hospital doc, you don't evenwant to know what the dentist is up to right now.
It's going to take them a long time to get those records.
for sure.
oh I want to point out that the quarter of that scene is actor Jeffrey Kramer who was theAmity Island deputy in Jaws.

(01:27:01):
So he's really good at looking horrified by dead bodies.
That guy has he has got that
And the rare coroner that isn't eating from their scene.
Yes.
You got to show that the coroner's detached, you know, from, from their jobs.
So you show them eating a hot dog while they're examining a body.
The coroner is always my favorite character in a movie because they're always eccentric, alittle off.

(01:27:26):
I love it.
The TV show Psych built a whole like recurring character built around that.
So they can't identify him, they don't know for sure, but Deputy Hunt agrees with Loomisthat until they know for sure that Michael Myers is dead, they have to assume he's still
out there.
I kind of like that Hunt is not the stereotypical unhelpful cop who's just there to be anobstacle to Loomis.

(01:27:49):
Like he genuinely wants to make sure nobody else dies.
He's going to fail, but that's what he wants.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Haddonfield have assembled at the Myers house throwing rocksand chanting evil dies tonight.
OK, maybe not the second bit, but, but, you know, it certainly feels like someone lookedat this scene and said, hey, what if this were a whole movie?

(01:28:15):
And that became 2021's Halloween Kills.
That sequence that I can't even say a sequence that it is the most hilarious thing.
I remember seeing that movie in the theater and people laughing at the screen as peoplewere chanting and saying that and going after that guy.
Those movies are so high.

(01:28:35):
Yeah
The 2018 one is, I liked a lot and then it kind of progressively got lesser from there.
ah It's something we'll, hey, we'll get to them at some point.
We'll do more Halloween sequels.
uh
if you really, you know, the most logical thing to do if you don't have a Dr.

(01:28:56):
Loomis, if you don't have Donald Pleasence, is you get a Dr.
Sartain.
Puts Michael's mask on.
yeah, I remember that.
I was thinking during that movie, join me on another journey listeners.
I was thinking when I was watching that movie, how much more interesting could that havebeen if Sartain had either he or someone that he was like another patient that he was in

(01:29:26):
control of were out there killing people.
But Michael was taking the fall for it.
That whole movie.
is actually, that is a great idea.
could have been a
The sartain character didn't make any it didn't matter ultimately.
mean, there's a lot of things in those three movies that just don't matter to the ultimateoverall story.
But that one in particular, and then when he's done away with it's it ends the only kindof color that's in that film to me.

(01:29:52):
Yeah, because I'm like,
a whole bit about Bon Me sandwiches if you- lot!
I mean it's not a little!
I didn't even know what that was before that movie, but what a banh sandwich was.
couldn't believe what the screen time that got that sandwich.
I mean, I love sandwiches, but I is now, is now, I mean, I guess it's like a little bit ofcolor, I suppose a little bit of something.

(01:30:16):
I don't know.
It's something.
a
Back to Halloween 2, want to talk, there's one great little detail about this scene at thehouse where the locals are throwing rocks.
They're standing outside the house and Deputy Hunt lights a cigarette.
And then he goes to light Loomis' cigarette, just presuming that he has one.

(01:30:39):
And then he just, he kind of clicks it once, and then he just hands the lighter to Loomis.
Loomis never gives it back.
That is the lighter that will play an important role later.
And that's realism.
Yeah.
Any smoker can tell you.
Don't hand over your lighter.
You're not going to get it back.
No, don't know.
You're never seeing that again.
And you know what?

(01:30:59):
To be perfectly honest, Deputy Hunt, never seeing that again.
Exactly, exactly.
uh So Bud back in the hospital, Bud scares the crap out of Karen who nevertheless agreesto meet him down in the therapy room.
And Laurie who has been sedated has a very odd dream.

(01:31:20):
So I want to mention some of this dream, but I want to...
talk about the big revelation of the film a little bit later, but the dream consists of wesee an image of a young girl holding a doll, being told by her mother, like in the
backyard hanging the laundry, and she's being told by her mother that she's not her realmother, which is a hell of a thing to say to a kid.

(01:31:42):
Like, even if it's true, that's a hell of a thing to say.
Then we see the same young girl tentatively approach a boy by a window.
and then the boy turns and looks at her.
And both of these images are intercut with blood dripping on the floor.
So this is all setting up the big revelation, which I'm sure most people know, although incase you're listening to this and have never seen a Halloween movie past two, you know,

(01:32:09):
it's, but we'll talk about that when we get to that moment.
It's just these dreams slash memory images feel, there's something about them that feelsso like,
I gotta find a way to set this up.
You know, it's like I could see John Carpenter sitting there being like, oh, I gotta setthis up.
We'll have her have.
is the insidious part too, where that room that the boy is in that the girl comes to isalso in the footage for the extended version or the TV version of Halloween.

(01:32:41):
Yeah.
So and I don't know.
I don't was that playing on TV in the lead up to Halloween to coming out like we wouldbeen prepping the audience for this.
Like it was the same time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was it just.
And it was a big deal when it debuted on TV.
Yeah.
Because back then things didn't make the leap as quickly as they do now.

(01:33:03):
But yeah, it was a big deal and they had to pad it.
Yeah, they had to cut some of the violence and stuff and obviously nudity, but then theyneeded to get it into like a two hour runtime.
So like a two hour with commercials slot.
So they shot more stuff when they were shooting Halloween two, uh including a lot moreLoomis.
It's mostly Loomis to be perfectly honest, but you have that scene with the boy in theroom, in that same room.

(01:33:29):
And you get a little awesome PJ souls as well.
uh
There with, with, uh, and Annie is on the phone asking to borrow a blouse as, as Robpointed out on social media the other day, Annie, who in the first film coordinates her
sweater to her telephone.
And that is fantastic.

(01:33:49):
I love it.
Annie, my God, my favorite character in the whole franchise.
Yeah
You know from our first night that she is, I love Annie.
She's great and she's got the best hair in the whole Halloween series.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
So yeah, we have this whole hot tub scene, which we we've covered some of the downsidesof, of what, know, what they're, they're doing in the hot tub.

(01:34:14):
Uh, but this is one of the most memorable scenes in the film with Bud and Karen and the,the therapy room.
ah You know, they're in the hot tub and and she's complaining that it's too hot What theydon't know is that Michael is turning up the heat on the temperature controls that are in
like like they put the temperature controls So far away like you have to go to anotherroom

(01:34:35):
It's because the doctors and nurses don't want to be near the stinky people that aregetting in this filthy fucking tub.
That's why.
Okay.
I suppose whoever taught him to drive also taught him how to use hot tub temperaturecontrols because Michael knows that.
doing very well last night.
You know, if if he had seen Thunderball, he would know exactly what to do.

(01:34:58):
It's true, that is true.
It's nice to have met you, Mr.
Bond.
Yeah, anyway, that's a line from Thunderball, guys.
I didn't just say that.
My favorite Bond film.
Really?
yeah.
that's a whole, I almost derailed this whole podcast going into that.
I love Thunderbolt.
Wow.

(01:35:18):
That's, that's a whole other thing.
Okay, everyone will come back in a week after Chris is done talking about Thunderball.
sorry.
Yeah, it's I can't, I can't go down that So Bud gets out to adjust the temperature and, ashe's doing so, Michael walks up right behind him and strangles him.
It is amazing that Bud could not hear Michael at all until literally like the, the,whatever he choked up with is around his mouth.

(01:35:46):
It's man, dude, I know you're, you're a smoke in the J, but you know, you might be alittle bit more aware of your surroundings.
the blood is in his lower half of his body.
It's all rushed to the lower part of his body.
It's not.
his brain.
You're right.
You're a hundred percent right.
know, I, especially cause the lower half, not only, you know, what you're, also he's beenin the hot tub and it's very hot.

(01:36:12):
It's all of that.
But he's, yeah, he's, you see him, he gets, he's behind and then, then Michael approachesKaren and she's got her back to him and you know, he touches her on the neck.
She assumes it's bud.
Like honestly, she even feels his hand and looks at it, but she can't tell the difference.
Holy shit, Karen.
was oh

(01:36:33):
She puts it in her mouth, but this is also someone who's willing to get in a hot tub in ahospital to mess around with somebody.
So she's not exactly playing with the full.
Yes.
mean, I mean, it's honestly this guy, don't know.
mean, she, don't know.
Maybe Michael smells good.
We don't know.
He could have some good lotion.

(01:36:54):
He could.
We don't, we don't always see him, what he's doing and he could have found some in thehospital.
Who knows?
He's been, he's been hanging around that hospital for a lot of the movie.
But then we get one of the most infamous kills in the series with Michael, the water isscalding and Michael plunges her head down into the boiling water.
And I mean, this is one of those things that I remember when I saw this movie as a kid,this stuck with you.

(01:37:17):
This was really something.
Holy shit.
You know, like it's.
It is so gruesome compared to the simplicity of what we see in the first.
yeah, no open casket for Nurse Karen.
no, and every time she comes up, it's just like a little worse.
The big surprise to me is she doesn't struggle more.

(01:37:38):
Like she kind of just down and back, down and back.
Well, she was biting, she was biting what she presumed was her playmates hand.
So maybe she's into this stuff.
don't feel like that's a reach.
It might be.
uh Loomis and Deputy Hunt head to the school, to a school that Michael Myers had brokeninto earlier in the night.

(01:38:03):
And this was actually shot at the same school, though they shot the school scenes from thefirst film.
So in the school, there's one desk that has some blood on it, just a drip of blood.
And then there's like a child's drawing with a knife stuck through the figure of a littlegirl.
And the knife, holy shit, is that knife perfectly like,
It is straight up and down.

(01:38:25):
Like if you, if you had a level, like it is perfectly positioned and then this is going tobe a thing.
And on the blackboard in blood, a single word.
What's this?
No.
It's a Celtic word.
Samhain.

(01:38:47):
The end of summer.
The festival of Samhain.
October 31st.
Sam Hain.
But not really.
It doesn't really mean that, guys.
That's not really what it means.
and that's not how you pronounce it either.

(01:39:09):
Yeah.
No!
In fact, it's Michael Doherty's 2007 film Trick or Treat that points out very helpfullythat is Samhain.
Correct.
Well, they say that in three.
Did they say Salad?
Here it's very much Sam Hain.
And that's what I thought it was for years.

(01:39:29):
Yeah, it is, is here.
It is in fact a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning ofwinter.
It commences on the sundown of, of October 31st.
And it is very likely a precursor to the modern Halloween.
A little later, Loomis will talk about it a bit saying how during the festival animals andpossibly even

(01:39:49):
people were sacrificed to appease the gods and that Druid priests believed they could seeomens of the future in how they died.
So yeah, the Festival of Samhain or Samhain as he called it does have Celtic origins andits inclusion in here is really interesting.
Like it's a curious thing.

(01:40:09):
Like is this trying to tie Michael into some Celtic mythology?
I don't know.
don't know.
Where do you learn about this?
I guess he had 15 years in the hospital.
He learned to drive there.
Drive, he learned to operate a hot tub and he learned about Samhain, but he didn't learnhow to pronounce it right.

(01:40:32):
Well, I guess that's Lewis.
Michael might've pronounced it if he ever said it.
Yeah, exactly.
It's such a curious bit here.
Like the Samhain Samhain thing.
Well, that's the interesting thing is it ties very strongly into the third movie thatwe'll talk about uh in two weeks and it's.

(01:40:53):
It's this thematic connective tissue, but it's such an odd thing here.
And also talking about the extended version, there's a scene in that where Loomis comes toMichael's room, like after he's escaped and written like carved into the back of the door,
not Sam Hain, but sister.

(01:41:15):
Little bit of foreshadowing there in the extended TV cut.
But this reminded me of that.
Like Michael likes to write things.
I think, I think thorn taught him about the heart.
Well, yes, at some point when we have a, you know, down the road when we have a wholeconversation about four, five and six, and we can have a whole exploration about the cult

(01:41:36):
of thorn.
I do think it was important that at some point they addressed how Michael takes naps.
by the time they got to six, all right, okay, you surround him by runes.
Yeah.
And he so many runes.
He falls asleep.
Like a little baby.
So cute.

(01:41:57):
But who shows up at the school looking for Loomis?
It's nurse Marion Chambers from the first film.
in case you forgot about her, Loomis helpfully says, I didn't recognize you in case theaudience didn't, Ivan.
She's got her hair down, so it's, you know, and she doesn't carry a red rabbit lounge, uhyou know, book of matches with her.

(01:42:18):
That's the giveaway.
That's her tell-sign.
Would she wasted in Halloween kills or what they brought?
Oh, yeah Halloween kills just to kill her off.
I know right
But she has come back to get Loomis to return to Smith's Grove because the governor ofIllinois has ordered him back and sent a marshal to ensure that that happens.

(01:42:43):
Like, this is crazy.
Like, this whole thing where they're trying to pull Loomis away is nuts.
Well, and also every police car in this movie, whether it's state, federal, local,whatever, the dashlights are bright green.
They had one light that they could fit in a dashboard.
It applies only in police cars in this movie, which makes me think back.

(01:43:06):
I kind of do remember dashboards at some point having different colors, like maybe evengreen.
But man, is it prominent?
Like it's really glowing.
from the dash in every cop car in this movie.
That's not the thing that bothers me the most about this scene, This is a thing, becauseLoomis and Chambers are having this conversation in the school where she's telling him the

(01:43:30):
governor's ordered you back.
But did you guys notice what was happening in the background?
There's a guy polishing the floor.
What the fuck?
Why would someone be polishing the floor of an elementary school at what has got to be1130 at night?
On Halloween!

(01:43:50):
What is happening?
The kids early on in the day ate all the candy.
Someone puked.
Maybe some trick or treaters broke in there.
You gotta clean it up.
I guess that's gotta be it.
That or the janitor is the real psycho.
I mean, maybe he's just, gotta keep the cool school clean.
Gotta keep the floors clean.
Gotta polish the floors.

(01:44:13):
Yeah.
Okay.
You got a better one?
No, was pretty good.
i will say, he's the one person in this ju- in this whole movie that's actually reallydoing their job
That's true, like, I mean, he's not drunk on the job like the doctor.
Yeah.
Committed.
He's he's committed.
Honestly, make this guy the mayor of Haddonfield.

(01:44:34):
At least, you know, like this guy should run.
Evil maps tonight.
Michael Myers continues stalking the halls of Haddonfield Memorial.
Jimmy goes to bug Laurie again, because that's all he does.
And he finds her seemingly catatonic.
And I said seemingly because I'm not convinced that she was actually catatonic.

(01:44:56):
One of the nurses goes to find the doctor.
She enters the doctor's office and it's immediately unsettling.
The shower is running and no one's there.
That is creepy, guys.
We don't know why.
And then she finds the doctor sitting at his desk and he turns around and there's a needlein his eye.
it's one of the, that's one of the most gruesome things in the whole series is that shotof the needle in the doctor's eye.

(01:45:21):
Holy shit.
There's nothing like that in the first film.
Yeah, it's, it is in full view.
then like rather than scream, the nurse sort of just looks frozen in horror and we haveMichael appearing out of the darkness behind her.
And it's almost exactly the same shot.
that we always talk about, probably the most talked about shot in any movie on this showis when Michael appears in the darkness behind Laurie.

(01:45:47):
We basically get a reprise of it here.
And then of course, he grabs the nurse, needle to the temple and he does the head thing,the curiosity head thing.
Yeah, the head tilt.
The other nurse is then called away from Laurie's room by a buzzer.
There's Jill, the nurse with the short blonde hair.
She goes down the hall to see what it is.

(01:46:07):
And then Michael appears.
and enters Laurie's room.
And he approaches the figure under the sheets and starts stabbing it with a scalpel.
But guys, it's just pillows.
So Laurie appears catatonic.
One nurse goes to get the doctor, doesn't come back.
The other nurse goes to answer a buzzer.
And what the way it must have gone down is that as soon as that second nurse left theroom, Laurie must have been out and have set the bed.

(01:46:36):
So my question is, was she actually catatonic or was that a fake out to get out of theroom because she felt like there was danger?
I
It's a good question, but I'm not really sure.
Like it's it's so quick.
There's such a small window She could have gotten out of that room between the time likethey were fat like oh was she faking it and I'm like that's interesting like that's she's

(01:46:58):
her survival instincts are kicking in
Yeah, they I mean, they did sedate her against her will earlier.
So I could buy that.
I could buy it's that brother sister psychic connection.
Right.
But and this is the part where because we're about to get in the end game here with Lauriein the at the end where I wanted to point out here, there's another.

(01:47:24):
And for me, I think it is an issue with setting this movie direct, picking up directly onthe same night.
which is that functionally this movie does not have an act one in any traditional sense.
And the reason why, I mean, and it's therefore very propulsive, but what I don't get thatI got in the first one is I do not have time to fall in love with the future victims.

(01:47:50):
It feels there's...
Well, but yes.
But you know, it's for the most part, it's just in time victim delivery in this movie.
And I think that's another thing that sets it apart.
And look, they're doing different things with the kills than they did in the first one.
This is much more spectacle, like you say.
Absolutely.

(01:48:10):
Yeah.
And it's, it's, mean, we meet that security guard right, like essentially we're introducedto security guard right before he dies.
Like some of these characters get introduced and very quickly dispatch, which isinteresting because that is something that slasher movies will, will do later.
Like again, talking about they're building the model as they go.

(01:48:33):
Yeah, that becomes the standard.
We get a little time with Mr.
Garrett, there's, cause he has to let some people in.
Yeah.
After hours, like through the door, buzz them in and he's sitting there reading Fangoria,which is awesome.
Yeah, that's fun.
But it's just enough to kind of feel like he's probably kind of dopey.

(01:48:53):
And so when he starts wandering around, it's like, okay, he's not just somebody who justpopped into frame and then he's killed off right away.
At least we get a little sliver of something with him.
Yeah, Head Nurse Alves, we see her kind of coming in trying to wrangle these employees.
Yeah.
I mean, there's not that many sailors but she runs a tight ship.

(01:49:15):
Yeah, don't be late, you know, that could be life or death.
She actually, she is great.
She is great.
We're gonna get to her.
We don't see her death but Jimmy goes to check the surgery rooms.
I want to point out there's two surgery rooms and they're very clearly marked majorsurgery and minor surgery.
So, you know.

(01:49:35):
Different pliers.
I, you know, I just.
You know, got a, someone's going to reattach a finger.
That's just minor surgery.
You got to take out a gallbladder major, but in, the minor surgery room, Jimmy finds Mrs.
Alves lying on this surgical table, basically being drained of blood.
Death by exsanguination.

(01:49:58):
Yeah, exsanguination.
The fun word.
It is a fun word and I had a feeling I was going to mispronounce.
It's a gruesome concept though.
To think about someone just running a tube into your artery and just leaving you there.
I mean, it's horrifying.
No, that's, that's yeah.
And then, and Jimmy's pretty calm about finding a coworker dead.
And then he slips on the blood and knocks himself unconscious.

(01:50:22):
Jimmy, I'm sorry, Jimmy, you just don't have the stuff.
You don't have what it takes.
You know, you're just, I'm not a Jimmy fan.
Lori could protect him if they decided to go out, you know?
That is true.
And you know what?
I have no problem with that on a conceptual level.

(01:50:43):
I'm not going to go into the macho nonsense, but at the same time I'm like, Jimmy, you seethe blood on the floor.
What are you doing?
No, this is true.
He can't pull his weight.
That's for sure.
he's,
He's not.
It's like in movies where people see blood and they have to touch it and then they have torub it between their fingers.

(01:51:03):
As though at some point we were all trained on how blood feels in fingers.
Well, has a different viscosity.
uh So Lori emerges from one of the rooms.
Like she has gone off and kind of wandered.
She emerges from one of the rooms.
Jill has gone out to the parking lot and realized all the tires are slashed, but thencomes back in and Michael appears behind her and puts the scalpel in her back and raises

(01:51:31):
her off the ground.
I love the bit where her shoes fall off.
Yeah.
It's so creepy and it's so cool.
Oh, it really is.
And this is this key moment we've been building to this whole movie.
It's the first time that Laurie has come face to face with Michael since the Doyle house.
And she's drugged because they've drugged her up.

(01:51:54):
The whole thing plays like a nightmare.
It is so effective.
I love it.
The lens effect that they use, the kind of vignette that shows that she's impaired.
Yes.
She's not clear headed.
She is drugged, but she is moving on a fractured ankle.
Yeah, yeah, you're right.

(01:52:14):
You're right.
You're all of that.
Like good for her.
much more, much, mean, Jimmy can't even get out of a room.
He doesn't have a fractured ankle and he can't even get past the room with blood on thefloor.
Jesus, what are you doing, Jimmy?
And I love this scene because it is a chase scene that happens and it's very quiet.
And I think that's really effective here.

(01:52:36):
Like it's not screaming.
It's just there's something very intense about.
That's kind of the whole movie.
Yeah?
Like, I mean, it'll ratchet up a little bit at the very end.
it will.
But it's kind of the opposite.
Like if you're looking at the Carpenter, the Carpenter verse that if you look at likePrince of Darkness, I love I love the score and everything John Everett.

(01:52:58):
sure.
That goes without saying the Prince of Darkness score is a true masterpiece as well.
And that has that is the pulse of that film from front to back.
There's rarely a moment without some kind of score happening in it.
This movie.
It almost plays like a silent film through most of it.
Yeah.
A substantial chunk of this movie is just environmental sounds.

(01:53:20):
Yeah.
Which is pretty haunting.
Yeah, I will say that the tension is undercut a little bit.
And this is where I'm to talk about something that really does bother me with this movie.
And it's a performance element, specifically the way Dick Warlock plays the shape as if hewas a robot.
It really bugs me because he moves like he is so slow.

(01:53:43):
And I know that Michael doesn't run, but this guy is so slow.
If you compare the scene where Michael comes down the stairs in the Wallace house in thefirst film to the moment here where he's like walking down the stairs in the hospital,
like there, there is a sense of energy, even though he's not running here, he is juststanding straight up and moving insanely slow and it bothers Chris.

(01:54:11):
I mean, guess, I mean, I guess that'll.
I shot him six times
It's not a man.
That's right.
But even though in the original he fired seven times and they actually had to fix that andgoing back, which I think is hilarious.
But yeah, you got to wonder here.
And then there's this whole discussion around Michael, human or something else.

(01:54:32):
Yeah.
That's the fans love to dive in on that stuff.
And this is the kind of thing that kind of leans into that when he can do some of thethings that he does in this film that for the first time we're seeing some kind of almost
superhuman strength.
when he picks her up with a scalpel is a tiny thing.
Totally.
Tiny, tiny thing.
Yeah.
And for him to be able to do that.

(01:54:53):
later on, we're going to see more supernatural abilities of Michael in this movie for thefirst time.
So I don't know.
It's like he's following her.
He's pursuing, I don't want to say he's chasing her.
That sounds like he's running.
He's pursuing her through the hospital.
And I'm telling you, if there's a couple of moments, there's a moment where she goesthrough a window from one, a window from one part of the hospital basement to another, by

(01:55:17):
the way, like still all filled with garbage.
They've got to clean up the basement of this hospital.
It's a real problem.
Come on.
Yeah.
And then, and then again at the elevator and where,
And it's a great moment where the doors are closing and he's approaching.
But I'm telling you guys, the shape from Halloween one would have got her both times.

(01:55:39):
Halloween two is a slower Michael Myers.
I can't remember what episode it was, Justin, but you mentioned a while ago how when mostpeople imitate Frankenstein's monster, they're not really doing Karloff.
but they're doing Glenn Strange's monster from some of the later universal horror movies.

(01:56:01):
And I think the same thing is true here.
I think when most people are doing Michael Myers, it's Warlock's shape rather than NickCastle, who they're imitating.
There are some really good ones out there, though.
There are some cosplayers who do each Michael differently with different masks and allthat.
That's cool.
now makes the full series of mass.
I have to bring this up to that with the original movie Trancas and Compass never theyweren't keen on licensing very much for a very long time.

(01:56:28):
This has changed in the last like 10 years.
Sure.
But Universal owns two and three.
Right.
Universal.
They won't approve anything.
I'm convinced that there's just a machine in an office like that cookie machine in EdwardScissorhands that's an approval stamp only related to Halloween.
And the stuff that is out there, I've started posting it on Instagram when I encounter itsomewhere.

(01:56:51):
I saw it.
I say today in Universal will approve anything.
And like I saw one this year, Spirit, it's a glittery knife that says bling knife.
What?
And it's got
It's all glittery stones on it.
says Halloween.
too.
Because there is that scene with the bling knife.

(01:57:13):
bling knife, you know, the bling knife, but it goes so far beyond anything reasonable interms of what they're approving and how this stuff looks.
is positively hilarious.
And it's all Halloween to brand.
So it's a lot of it's a lot of Michael with the red blood tears.
It's a lot of that stuff.
man, it is a may I would love just a catalog of everything Universal has approved becauseit is some of the worst merchandise I've ever seen in my life.

(01:57:40):
And it is just whored out.
It's awful.
There we go.
As they're driving out of Haddonfield, Nurse Chambers finally decides to tell Dr.
Loomis the movie's big revelation, which I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, youknow by now that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers' long lost son.

(01:58:06):
Dr.
Loomis, please listen to me.
There's a file on Michael Myers that nobody knew about.
I've seen everything.
No, no, it was hidden.
Sealed by the court after his parents were killed.
Now after the governor heard what happened tonight, he authorized Dr.
Rogers to open it.
What file?
It isn't fair.

(01:58:27):
They should have allowed you to examine everything.
That Strode girl, that's Michael Myers' sister.
She was born two years before he was committed.
Two years after his parents died and she was adopted by the Strodes.
They requested that the records be sealed in order to protect the family.

(01:58:48):
Jesus, don't you see what he's doing here in Haddonfield?
He killed one sister 15 years ago, now he's trying to kill the other.
Tonight, after I shot him, where did they take her?
The clinic.
The clinic?
Where?
Do you know this area well?
little bit where's the hospital located dr lumens were under orders from the governor it'sback around turn this car around now i can't do i've got orders those orders have changed

(01:59:14):
dr lumens do you often what do you fellas usually do fire warning shot right
Okay, first thing, why did she wait until now to tell him?
Like why wait until they're out of town in the car?

(01:59:34):
Like why not tell him at the school?
I mean, maybe she was afraid the guy buffing the floor would over here, but like it's likethat she waited this long to tell him is insane.
and that he was Michael's doctor for years since he was would he not know?
Since he was that little kid, how would he not know anything about the family?
And apparently at some point the Strode's who wanted the record sealed, they would takeLaurie to see Michael in the mental institution?

(02:00:02):
Like if you wanted the record sealed, why would you take him, take her to see him?
And how would Loomis not know about that?
That's bonkers.
It is absolutely bonkers.
Like it's just like, and it's what I would say about this movie does a great job.
of making me believe the town of Haddonfield.

(02:00:23):
Both the first and second movies really make me believe the town of Haddonfield.
But it stretches the browns of credibility that nobody in this town, in this relativelysmall town, would know that there was a third Myers child.
Yes.
can believe you wouldn't know where the child ended up.

(02:00:44):
Absolutely.
But that she existed at all.
She was born two years before the killing of Judith Myers.
And then two years later, the parents died.
so there's two years between the time Judith Myers is killed and the time the parents die.
And nobody seems to literally the town has been hypnotized to forget that there was athird child.

(02:01:08):
is, it's crazy.
It is absolutely crazy.
Blame it on the druids everybody else does oh
And it set the series on a course that it never escaped from.
Even when even when those lame-o new Blumhouse movies came out and they're like resettingit and they made a real strong point to say this is not, you know, Laurie is not Michael's

(02:01:29):
sister in these films.
Right.
But tell me how it's different.
Exactly exactly it still plays out as if he's targeting her
Absolutely and she's obsessed with him from the beginning.
I mean, it's so even when they want to stray from this, they can't.
It's a simple decision made in a sequel early in a long running franchise that literallyno one could pry themselves away from from this.

(02:01:56):
it's wild.
It has literally haunted the Halloween franchise since 1981.
And some films have leaned into it more like Halloween 4 and H20 or is it H20?
I never know whether it's H20 or H20.
I don't know.
But the 1998 Halloween.

(02:02:16):
But even like the Rob Zombie reboot, like there, because you were starting with a cleanslate, right?
You had every opportunity to leave that behind and they
didn't.
They make it integral.
And here's the truth.
This is what it comes down to for me, is that I honestly believe there's kind of one goodMichael Myers story.

(02:02:37):
Basically, Michael Myers comes home, and the original is telling that story, and some ofthe sequels are basically doing variations on that.
And it works.
And where this series runs into trouble,
And it happens time and again is when they try to explain Michael Myers and it starts herebecause they're trying to find a reason why he does what he does and that is always the

(02:03:07):
problem.
Like why is Michael killing?
Yeah, we need to find a reason for it.
We need, it's his sister.
It's the cult of Thorne or it's this or it's that.
It's all of that.
is an effort to explain what is most effective when it is unexplained.
This idea that one day out of the blue, evil came to reside in a six-year-old boy.

(02:03:35):
And that is something way more frightening than dude wants to kill his sister.
Yeah.
No, I tend to agree.
Because it means that anybody could be Michael Myers.
That is within all of us.
And Loomis even says
Samhain isn't evil spirits.
It isn't goblins, ghosts or witches.

(02:03:57):
the unconscious mind.
We're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves.
And that actually really ties in with the first movie.
But I think as soon as you make it his sister, he's going after his other sister, well,then some of the fear goes away because, well, if you're not his sister or you're not in

(02:04:20):
the way, hey, you're probably going to be okay.
Just like the L-Rods were okay.
If that's his goal, it just kind of, it makes you question the motives behind everythinghe's doing outside of her.
Agree.
Because in this hospital where no one's ever in the room with anyone else through most ofthe movie, you could just wander those.
He did wander the halls.
He did.

(02:04:41):
He doesn't need to be doing any of that stuff.
No.
Right.
He just needs to find Laurie and that's it.
did.
And in the original Halloween, he wouldn't have followed the kid.
He wouldn't like it brings into question everything that Michael has done in both of thesemovies.
It's it's a very odd decision.

(02:05:02):
And I think I would imagine it's one that Carpenter probably still struggles with thedecision to do that.
would maybe.
Whenever you hear him in interviews, whenever he talks about this movie, he doesn't soundparticularly pleased.
I I, I, again, I grew up watching this movie.
I love this movie.

(02:05:22):
I acknowledge that it has flaws, but Carpenter clearly has a much different relationshipwith it than all of us.
So, you know, once, once Loomis finds out that Laurie is the sister, you know, he, hegoes, Oh my God.
But like, like I love.
He takes out the gun, he demands the marshal turn around, he fires the warning shot that Ifind hysterical for some reason.

(02:05:47):
I don't know, I think it's the way he says, what does a fellas do, fire a warning shot,blam.
He's a cowboy.
It's just like, it's so great.
And then back at the hospital, like Lori has gotten out of the hospital, she's hiding in acar, which is actually pretty good.
Like even though she can't go anywhere, it's like, it's not a bad hiding place except forwho comes to find her.

(02:06:13):
Fucking Jimmy shows up, gets in the car, passes out on the horn.
This guy, I swear to
I mean, he's massively concussed, you know?
I want to say this, something I love about Carpenter, how he uses cars throughout hisfilmography and what cars mean to us.

(02:06:36):
Absolutely.
you know, car, especially when you're young, it's freedom, right?
It's like a place to be private and free.
And this gets explored in something like Christine.
could go anywhere and my mom doesn't have to take.
for sure.
But in in Halloween and in Halloween two is like the car becomes a death trap.
stuck little enclosed space and you think it might be a way to escape.

(02:07:01):
But you're actually really just locked into this in this really tight space where thekiller could come for you.
I love that.
Yeah, cause Annie is killed in a car in the first film.
Right.
And the very beginning of the first film, when they pull up to the sanitarium, Michaelattacks them in the car.
But then to your point about freedom, when they're driving in the car and talking aboutBen Tramer and all that stuff, smoking the weed, that is their escape.

(02:07:29):
That's their safe place as teens to be able to sort of be away from adult prying eyes.
So that makes Lovato.
And that's the horror that this thing that gives you that sense of freedom andindependence then can be turned against you to be a place where you're vulnerable.
I love that.

(02:07:50):
That is amazing.
And the first movie that guy didn't think about until now was that Linda's boyfriend,whose name I forget off the top of my head, he's the one with the glasses, has a sweet
van.
my God.
What I wouldn't give for that 70s van.
I you know that's got carpeting inside.
You just know it.
Laurie now has to exit the car because now the car is no longer safe because of Jimmy.

(02:08:13):
And she gets into the parking lot.
kind of falls on the pavement just in time to see Loomis chambers and the Marshall gooutside.
Um, but she can't yell in her like semi sedated, you know, state.
then of course, Michael's right there and, and there she runs to the door.
Uh, Loomis, you know, opens it at the last minute.

(02:08:36):
Thankfully, again, I, I'm going to contend that Halloween one Michael would have gottenher at the door.
Halloween 2 Michael is not fast enough.
leisurely, leisurely stroll to the door.
Yeah, it's just, you know, exactly that.
But then, a leisurely stroll right through the door.
Because again, this is where it's Robot Michael walking through the glass door with noproblem.

(02:08:58):
Like, just kind of, like he doesn't even like struggle.
He just kind of walks up to it and it just sort of shatters.
Lubus has gone completely around the bend by this point and it's great.
But.
What's he gonna do?
He puts five more bullets into Michael Myers, just like he did at the end of the firstmovie.
He's only got five left because he fired the warning shot.

(02:09:18):
He puts all five and Michael is down.
And this is one of those things where I think it works great at the end of the first moviebecause he shoots him, he falls, Loomis looks over, he's gone, and then the movie ends.
So you're asking what happened?
Did he disappear?
Did he run off?

(02:09:39):
How did he survive?
But the movie's not planning to give you answers.
Here, Michael's on the floor for like 30 seconds and then he's up and killing the marshal.
And it's like, now you're starting to ask like legitimate questions of like, well, howdoes this guy, how is he basically immune to bullets?

(02:10:00):
This movie, it does some of the same things as the first movie, but in a way that makesyou ask harder questions.
than the first movie, because the first movie, it ends on that moment.
Here, it's like kind of as we're getting to it, it's just like, this dude's bulletproof.
Does he have a vest?
Like, we don't know.
Maybe that's it.
Maybe I never thought of that before.

(02:10:20):
Maybe he's got a vest.
Well, for sure.
And the ripple the ripples will reverberate from here on out.
Right.
This that, you know, he's unstoppable, which then, of course, begs the question how hecan't be human.
I love the way that this plays out, though, because poor Loomis has been ranting andraving.

(02:10:42):
Nobody takes him seriously.
And I will say if he were a little calmer and sounded a little more emotionally balanced.
Yeah.
Maybe people would be more open to heeding what he's saying, because he's just like, no,get away from him, get away.
And the marshal is like, you know, bending over.

(02:11:04):
He's like, no, he's not breathing.
He's not breathing.
And Loomis is like, get away from him.
And we all know, like the marshal's a goner.
goner that guy honestly the minute he got in the car with with dr.
Loomis it wasn't gonna end well for him one way or the other
And when Lori and Loomis are standing there and Loomis checks on Lori, like, I'm sorry Ileft you, you know, I, I, you know, but she never takes her eye off of Michael Myers.

(02:11:31):
And I love that this, survivor, this resilient survivor that is still in likehypervigilant mode.
Like I am not taking my eyes off him.
It's amazing.
is great.
Yeah, absolutely.
So then Michael, he's going to pursue Loomis and Laurie through the hospital and they gointo the major surgery room.
They don't even bother with the minor surgery room.

(02:11:53):
They go in the major surgery room where there are oxygen tanks and Michael busts throughand he's out of bullets.
Loomis doesn't have, can't get a shot off and Michael stabs Loomis and then Michaelapproaches Laurie.
And we have this great moment where she says his name and he pauses for just a second.

(02:12:15):
You think, you wonder what might happen, but then he starts to continue.
And then she picks up the gun and two shots to the eyes.
to, like, you never get the impression she fired a gun, but holy shit, she's a good shot.
Bang, bang, one in each eye.
And then we get the iconic crying blood image, you know, which, you know, it's fantastic.

(02:12:36):
Like it's such a, it's such a.
rate on the white mask?
Like holy shit does that look fantastic.
It's the Sam Hain Stigmata.
You know it.
That's it.
and then Loomis starts turning on the oxygen tanks as, as Michael is sort of slashingwildly.
That's great.
And then Laurie gets out just in time before he uses the deputies lighter to blow thewhole place to smithereens and, and Laurie takes cover outside as the burr is burning.

(02:13:06):
Michael Myers emerges from the flames.
Holy shit is that that is a mate like that.
is a full urn.
a long full book.
Yeah.
my God.
um It's it's it is an incredible image and holy shit is he amazing for pulling that off.

(02:13:27):
And the score is just a cacophony of electronic blasts and don't you don't don't it's justintense everything all around.
It is such an overwhelming scene in such a tight space in the hallway and the whole placeis going up in flames.
Talk about dramatic.
Yeah.
And apparently they did this burn stunt twice.

(02:13:50):
Holy shit.
And the only injury that Warlock had were apparently the zippers on the jumpsuit, on thesleeves of the jumpsuit heated up, which they did because they were metal.
Yeah.
And so you got small burns on either of his arms, his lower arms, but that's it.
And then you have that shot of the mask burning.
That's another carpenter reshoot was the shot of the mask burning away.

(02:14:14):
Like it almost reminds me of the Terminator, like a couple years later.
Oh yeah.
Well, I'd say the Terminator almost reminds me of this.
And in the end, Laurie's helped into an ambulance, presumably to go to hospital thathasn't suffered as much fire damage.
And it's now morning and the sun, you forget, like you see there's a lot of the firstHalloween that happens in daylight.

(02:14:35):
And you almost forget that there's been no daylight in this movie until that morning, thatmorning after.
moment where she's getting in the ambulance and it's really, it's really something.
I also want to mention Lori's parents still haven't showed up.
They're passed out somebody or they're at a key party.
They don't have their keys.
They lost their keys at a key party and that's why they couldn't show up.

(02:14:59):
1978, it all fits.
These people.
And then, you know, she gets off, she's in the ambulance and you you then, you know, Mr.
Sandman at the end, which is fantastic.
There is another scene that was originally at the end.
It was cut for the theatrical release, but actually put back in the television edit whereJimmy is in the ambulance with her.

(02:15:23):
and we learned that Jimmy survived and like she's in the foreground and Jimmy is under asheet and he sits up behind her and she has a moment and then, you know, realizes it's
Jimmy.
And I'm, I'm, think that's a good cut because I don't love the idea of that classicMichael Myers sitting up thing becoming the punchline at the end of the second movie.

(02:15:47):
I
Thanks.
And it's clear, like this movie is very clear that John Carpenter and Debra Hill intendedthis to be the end of the Michael Myers story.
Like this is intended to be the end of the story and we all know that's exactly whathappened.
Yeah, that was it.

(02:16:07):
Michael Myers never returned.
They did a whole series of Halloween films with different characters and stories, andaudiences were totally cool with that.
Yeah.
Halloween became synonymous with anthology series.
Exactly!
It wasn't...
Hey, I have to say, when Michael came back in part four, it was such a big deal in likeFangoria world and all the magazines and everything.

(02:16:34):
just remember, man, what a moment.
And I remember him when they showed he was front and center on the cover of Fangoria,maybe a month before that movie came out.
And I didn't see it in the theater.
was too young.
at the time to see that in theater, but I just remember what a huge deal it was.
And I think that, I mean, they just knew they had something that they, there was somethingthat had been sitting dormant for many years, darkest eyes, and they had to bring it back.

(02:17:03):
They had to.
It's so interesting.
The 80s were the decade of slasher movies and Michael Myers kicks that off with Halloweenand Halloween II and then basically sits out most of that decade and comes back at the
very end.
And in the middle you have, you know, Jason and Freddie and plenty of characters that onlywere in one movie.

(02:17:26):
But it's interesting that Michael bookends it in that way.
Yeah, it's, it's again, the thing about this movie, I, again, I really like this movie,but the decision to make Laurie Strode Michael Myers sister.
I mean, that is one of the most seismic decisions for this series.
And, uh, you know, it's just, it's, it's the Halloween trap.

(02:17:49):
The more you explain Michael Myers, the more you ascribe motive, the less frightening hebecomes.
you
This is true, but they will do it time and time again.
time and time again.
They'll find reasons after reasons, know, Thorne, Buster Rhymes, whatever, you know.
You know, at some point we'll get to them.
And I should mention Halloween II was very successful at the box office in October of1981.

(02:18:14):
And John Carpenter and Deborah Hill did agree to return for a third installment in theseries with the provision that they could do something very, very different.
And that's the movie we'll be talking about in two weeks.
when we'll be discussing 1982's Halloween III Season of the Witch, a movie that tried tobreak the series away from the Michael Myers character, an effort that while ultimately

(02:18:41):
unsuccessful, would produce a fascinating and bizarre film that has, over the decades,become a beloved cult classic.
So, that brings us to the end of Halloween II.
Carmelita!
Thank you so much for joining us today.
It has just been absolutely fantastic having you on.
And we're excited for you to come back and explore Halloween 3 in two weeks.

(02:19:05):
uh
I'm so looking forward to it.
Thank you all again for inviting me back.
I love talking movies with you guys.
yeah, it's same here.
And tell anybody out there where you can be found on social media, because uh you are outthere and you're very active and it's great.
I'm on Twitter still and blue sky and a post what I've been watching on letterbox.

(02:19:30):
It's the same handle everywhere at Carmelita says.
Carmelita says.
And join all of us.
We'll all be back on Tuesday, October 21st for Halloween 3, Season of the Witch.
And don't forget, our next series, Get Me Out of There Die Hard, will be coming to youthis November, just in time for the holiday season.

(02:19:53):
As always, we are your hosts, Chris Iannico and Rob Lemorgous and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed the show,
Please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky, Instagram, threads and Twitterat Get Me Another Pod.
Make sure to check out Justin's new album, Phantom Lightkeeper, Shore Ghosts, which youcan listen to the first tracks of now on Spotify and Bandcamp.

(02:20:15):
It's going to be out October 10th.
You can order it at JustinBeam.com.
It's the perfect soundtrack for the spooky season.
And if you like the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell the Strode family about it if they ever bother to show up.
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get meanother.

(02:20:43):
Mr.
Sandman, bring me a dream Make him the cutest that I've ever seen Give him two lips likeroses and clover Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over Sandman

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Bonus Episode: Halloween II (with Carmelita Valdez McKoy)

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