Blank Check with Griffin & David - Halloween with Alex Ross Perry

Episode Date: August 22, 2021

It’s our biggest episode EVER as Alex Ross Perry brings his own dossier of talking points to tackle 1978’s iconic HALLOWEEN. We explore the history of American independent cinema as seen through the lens of the low-budget horror genre, and determine who’d be included in the slasher villain Mount Rushmore (Chucky isn’t carved into the rock; he’d be working at the gift shop). Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

A podcast wouldn't do that. This isn't a podcast. This isn't a podcast. This isn't a podcast. I'm giving you alternate reads here. Sure. You just seem mildly confused. This isn't a podcast. I'm trying to think of my pleasance.

I was going to do the... This isn't a podcast. The big Loomis speech, but then I realized a thing I should not say, and I'm about to say it, is the blackest podcast. The devil's podcast. That's misrepresenting this show. That will disappoint two different audiences. Good call. Good call.

This is not the devil's Podcast, in fact. Well, sometimes it feels that way. Go ahead. And some people think. Yes. Yes. And everyone's entitled to their opinion. But this is, in fact, a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. Just starting it off. Yeah, let's just start it off, right? Because I think we have a lot to get to today. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear.

And sometimes they bounce baby. This is a main series on the films of John Carpenter. Yep. It's called They Podcast because I was overruled. Yep. Good call by us. Yeah, I feel good about that choice still to this day.

I've read some of the comments when Marie put out the new miniseries artwork. And I thought Podcasts from New York was maybe like a good alt that we didn't actually really think of. I've never pitched that. I pitched Podscape from Newcastle. like a good alt that we didn't actually really think of. I've never pitched that. I pitched Podscape from Newcastle.

Right, which was stupid. Well, no, that was dumb and we didn't like that. I felt pretty vindicated by the comments saying, why isn't this miniseries name sweaty enough? Right, but here's the thing. None of them actually said a title. You know, it wasn't like sometimes they're all in on like it should have been called X title. Do we know what was in the running? Yeah, we know.

From you, not from... Podscape from Newcastle. Pod Trouble and Little Casta. There's one that just already is on my mind that makes perfect sense. What? In the pod of Castness. Yeah, I like that one. Yeah. Assault on Podcast 13. I feel like it was thrown out at one point. Yep. That was like, yeah. sense what in the pot of castness yeah i like that one yeah that's all time podcast 13 i feel

like was thrown out at one point yep that was like yeah that was that was another good option but come on they podcast that's fun that's good well they do they do we do we do a podcast now yeah and i'm happy to be in person with you guys. In person. In person for the first time in two years now. For us? Yeah. Oh, easily. Right? Yeah, when would the last time even be?

I think the last time would have just been something at David's apartment. Right. You were last on the show a year ago. I don't even have a memory of being in a studio. And I think it was probably a year before that. Well, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, a Spider-Man concert. Yeah, at David's house.

Right. But that's 2019. Yeah, two years ago. concert. Yeah, at David's house. Right. But that's 2019. Yeah, two years ago. Yeah. Pretty much almost to the day. Yeah. Oh,

boy. And I got to say, you know, cats out of the bag. This is our Halloween episode. Correct. Guest is director, filmmaker,

Alex Ross Perry. Everyone, and I feel triumphant about this. Yes. It's like, all right, so what's he doing? Memoirs of an Invisible Man?

Everyone assumes. Dan Myers. You're playing your usual game. What's the least essential movie in filmography? They're all right. And it's a big surprise. You decided to break your streak of trying to pick the most irrelevant film. I should be doing one of those.

Village of the Damned. One of those. It would have been Memoirs. Memoirs. It was the only one I've never seen yeah yes at this point but david that's another thing you like cold watching yeah yeah especially someone who means a lot but david how many minutes after the end of march madness did i call this episode uh you didn't do it during honestly i think it was during the final day i said carpenter wins i want halloween you were very angry on one of the march madness updates we casually said carpenter essentially created a genre and you uh kind of blew up both of us yes over the phone he didn't blow me up i gotta say

this is something that happened to really yeah i didn't get blown up maybe i blew up privately maybe i blew you up in person no you blew me up over not knowing the movie burnt offerings burnt offerings that was the one that you were mad at me about not knowing about that this came up yes you guys were reading and maybe he blew you up because you said he invented a genre whatever he had separate blow-ups at separate times over 70s horror here's here are the facts i think okay two things one i was very hurt by my pathetic and embarrassing loss in march madness and i wanted to just okay i want to talk about that for exactly five minutes we can very briefly talk about that but i will say to my wanting this for

for wanting this episode okay well let's put time on the clock. Just to be clear, at March Madness, we had some friends of the show pick directors. Right. Once a year, we let people vote for what miniseries we're going to do

and this year we mixed it up and we had one region where we picked eight of our favorite recurring guests and let them each pick a director. And I said to Alex,

who do you want? I've been longing for years that you guys really should consider covering Oliver Stone. I think we should put five minutes on the clock now i know you're saying you want to say something first but let's have this count for the five minutes i've put five minutes on the clock okay don't worry i'm gonna cut this off we don't need to go over i just need to say something i told you when you said all of a sudden i was like alex oliver stone is not going

to win a single twitter poll he's not cool he's the opposite of what you know people on twitter are interested in i'm just saying i warned you i'm like and i understand what you're saying you were like what are you talking about bulletproof case like you know you guys have to cover i said anybody who loves this show the way i do uh-huh will instantly be like, that is five months of incredible episodes with wonderful insights on some of the most important films of American cinema of the 1980s, 1990s, and even a little bit in the 2000s.

If you love the show the way I do, you will be like, I have to hear that miniseries. And it turns out, most people don't love the show the same way. Well, I was also just trying, you're not on Twitter, to your credit. That's the other thing.

I was not able to mobilize any fan base because I don't have one. But beyond that, I was just like, if you take the temperature of sort of Twitter, Oliver Stone, he's peanut butter and pickles. Like, no one's interested. He's interviewing Putin long form. Right. He's just not in a place right now where people are fired up about him. I was really humiliated by this and i thought it was really sad because we were denied something that could be great it's not that i

wanted him to win i didn't think that would happen i wanted him to build enough momentum that at some point he thought he might sneak by maybe um a couple i wanted a couple victories however i also was very clear that the only thing i actually wanted was a winner from ben's region and the only thing i really wanted was for john carpenter to win because this is a no-brainer sure yeah and then i was like well if i if i'm so i'm brought i'm so low from this and i want to be on again but i also don't want to just be like well i tried with a candidate and i lost so here i am we're talking about one of his irrelevant films you don't want to just be like, well, I tried with a candidate and I lost, so here I am talking about one of his irrelevant films. You don't want to just be given

the Secretary of Transportation. Yeah, exactly. I said, if this is happening, if somebody wins their candidate, they would probably pick the totemic episode. And when we did a fair amount of this of offering to the people who had not been on in a little

while and had other candidates in March Madness like you get an early pick. You can pick a big one. And I wanted the biggest because I knew Ben maybe he could have said actually I just want that episode to be private. No guests. Well yeah. For such a big one. I mean we do that sometimes. We do that sometimes. But no.

I feel like this is just this director I mean Johnny Boy is just so beloved. Johnny Boy. I feel like this is just this director i mean johnny boy is just so beloved and i feel like we would we just we we wanted to have as many people on for this series as we could so yeah i i just want i want to say something to your credit you raised a good point not stink but a good point after the fact that we should have considered which is first round matchup you should have gone up which is first round matchup, you should have gone up against JD as the two people without Twitter. That perhaps it was unfair to put the two of you up against people

who were able to mobilize. A very brutal weapon just to say to your followers, do me a favor, click on this thing. You don't know what it is. Well, this is why we're done with Twitter. Good. So next year you'll put Stone back in and he'll go the distance because Sure, fine.

He can be in there. Well, God knows what we're going to do next year. Was he in our Oscar versus Razzie bracket? No, you'll put stone back in and he'll go the distance because sure fine his dark god knows what we're gonna was he in our oscar versus razzie bracket no you would never had him in if i looked at all 32 i would have said the only two of these that i really think would be wall-to-wall great are stone and carpenter wow like these are just the best assortment of episodes variety of i'll say this when Jonathan Demme won I was wrong you're sending it in being like this is a disaster

for the show but now I know I thought and I told you this and this was part of my argument Stone is the dark Sith to the Demme Jedi

it's the same exact filmography art the same highs and lows and I said he's the same as Zemeckis it's these kinds of guys

these are great mini series anyway we're done talking about it. I don't disagree in theory. I'm going to be so stringent in keeping this focused on the film Halloween. Sure.

That's why I want to say just one final thing. Which, thanks to my structure, I will not get to for 45 minutes. But then when I do, we're talking about it. Alex has come prepared with notes. He's got a notebook.

He's got several printed pieces of paper and things on his is what i wrote down while watching the film okay the several pages i have printed out here is the syllabus it's my syllabus i came here to relitigate march madness yeah i came here to school you guys on the history of american horror as a genre from 1968 to 1978 in order to understand the context for what Carpenter did with this film and his subsequent career.

Right. And chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of bubblegum. Those are the three things. And I'm all out of relitigation. Okay. But anyway, fans have demanded John Carpenter and they're right.

And John Carpenter is a hero and an absolute titan of cinema. And one of the finest filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century no question i think but in order to understand him i think there's a lot and when i say a lot i mean a lot of context that you need to understand okay leading up to the film halloween which we will be talking about in as i told told David last week, excruciating detail. This is, I feel like, truly, in every way, the least work I have done for an episode in as long as I can remember. And that even re-watching this movie, I was barely trying to formulate

thoughts because I was like, Alex is going to do whatever Alex is going to do. Our hands are off the wheel on this one, you know? Yes. I'm just here for you to guide us through this. I love listening to your show and i love talking to you guys as friends but it has come up many times that horror is a humongous blind spot self-admitted in some cases sure but david really still remembers how brutally i raked him over the coals for on the oops all box office episode you guys chortling and saying there's burnt offerings like is this a real movie oliver reed is in this and i just tell you i was like david this is a beloved film that you and and we all share the same exact we

all have the same dna of of nerdery uh-huh right we're all trivia veterans uh-huh we could all sit at trivia and basically hit the same rounds but then within these subsections of nerdery there are these other things that one person knows everything about and one person knows nothing about and that's kind of the beauty of people that have essentially the same interest but the interests diverge and it also comes up a lot where i feel like like david you were saying last year you spent a lot of time familiarizing yourself with a lot of i feel like like david you were saying last year you spent a lot of time familiarizing yourself with a lot of the horror franchises that you had said you had not seen fun projects well i'd seen some but i'd never seen every entry and you made it an effort to

go through the totemic franchise because these were blind spots and you want them filled in and ben you're obviously a big a big you're a big horror guy more so yeah because just because you're from from scum scumbag country like i am yeah pennsylvania new jersey people like to wear cut off shorts and sleeveless shirts and wear horror and get weird and drink a ton of soda which is what we were talking about before we uh started this episode be kind of raw and i just felt like if i could hellraiser is like a hero of mine yeah pinhead he's a close personal friend absolutely yeah yeah we're we're we're uh we're pen pals but not in the way you think we send each other i've seen hellraiser many times but i've never seen a hellraiser sequel okay see that's a big problem that's the this is what i'm

talking about where it's like there's only ben there's so many avenues her third hellraiser is the is the cyberpunk hellraiser i know so this is a hell on earth this is the one with cd yes the one with flying c this is like this is like such a good reminder i have to see this i can't a cyberpunk hellraiser is a real ben phrase but man ben's kind of like the renfield to the cenobites where they're like kind of making you pay pay your dues and then they'll potentially welcome you into the the cenobite army i'm aware of the cd hell by hellraiser and when we watched the hellraiser franchise i talked to you about right right right he comes up the first hellraiser is a masterpiece i love it wonderful and then a couple of halloweens ago at home my wife anna i said let's watch hellraiser 2 she said this is pretty good and we watched Hellraiser 3 and she said this is the last Hellraiser I'm watching

when I'm finished with Hellraiser and keeping we're going to get to talking about horror sequels but we're not going to talk about Hellraiser because it comes after Halloween can I just ask do they stop being theatrical after 3? no I think 4 but then isn't there

there's like a guy who came on board for the direct-to-video ones that made a couple that are well-liked. There are. I haven't gotten into those. And this is the whole thing about horror is if we're talking about this is it's so dense because these movies can be made so cheaply

that there's so many and I get over... It's like anime. I've seen a lot more horror than I've seen anime. But where I'm like, oh, God, I can't. I'm just digging and digging and finding more things and I'm getting overwhelmed. Yes, but the thing is, horror fans will see everything. It is a monolithic genre. If it's your thing, you can see everything.

And if you look at horror fans or you talk to them it's like this bullshit netflix horror movie i watched it straight to shutter horror movie i watched it right new direct-to-video amityville movie i watched it and that's the relationship that horror fans have with the genre and i feel like coming on this is the third carpenter film before any of his other horror films and i feel like coming on to kind of talk about what the genre was when he changed it forever with this film and what he brought to it to contextualize his innovations as a filmmaker a director of the camera really and his use of music and writing is just so essential not just to halloween but to the rest of the carpenter miniseries can i

just say just to sort of like frame my blind spots yes i'm gonna say we're starting in 1968 okay because this is just all i want to say is that like uh certainly is not my my my genre of strength right uh in terms of movie knowledge to begin with but also i feel like in high school i went through this period where i was just like uh homework's irrelevant i'm just gonna watch movies all the time which worked out really really well homework is irrelevant yeah homework sucks yeah fucking homework is the worst it's for losers it's for losers and babies um and so i i was very much like systematically going through blind spots in sort of what I perceived as a 15 year old of like my film knowledge and stuff. Right.

So a lot of that was sort of what David was saying of like, oh, I need to watch the first movie of every franchise. So I kind of like did that and then would move on because I was trying to cover as many of the icons as possible without going deep into them. Freddie and Shucky are the two guys I went deep on. Unsurprisingly, they reflect the two sides of my personality stinkers right when also freddie has so much practical effects and sort of fantasy elements like very griffey stuff it's essentially a comedian and a toy yeah right yeah um beyond that my horror preference is just in terms of aesthetics and vibe or whatever uh not that i position myself as being expert is like pre-1960 okay like german expressions universal monsters right even sort of

like uh vincent price early vincent price roger foreman or whatever ben's giving you a pretension no but there's i have a transition from that which is very that's all i just okay now you i'm glad you mentioned 1960, because the first thing you have to mention is Psycho. Of course. Which is the first movie of its kind that Halloween is a movie of its kind. There is nothing before Psycho that is like that. That is like...

The premise of this movie is somebody picks up a knife and they use it to kill people. What if there was a guy who killed people? They use the knife repeatedly to stab people through their body, and then the person is dead, and then they go to another. But wait, isn't there that German movie, German expressionist movie, M? Yeah, the guy is different.

He's a child kidnapper. M is different. Okay. Psycho is, what if there was a psycho? Yeah. I mean, it is. And M is less of a horror movie. It's more framed around trying to catch this guy.

Yeah, okay. It's a little more purgative. He's like, eh. We really jumped down Ben's throat to correct him about what M is about. Listen up, this guy. Yeah, okay. It's a little more purgative. He's like... We really jumped down Ben's throat to correct him about what M is about. Listen up, Ben. Listen up, Ben. Let's give some explaining.

But Psycho 1960, yes. That is obviously a huge thing. Anna also, when I was telling her about my thesis I was going to present, said make sure you mention Peeping Tom, which is 61. Great. Isn't it later?

Maybe not. Let me look it up. No, it's 60. It's also 60. So those two movies, 1960, are kind of two sides of the coin, opposite sides of the ocean. And Psycho is beloved, gets Oscar nominations, is a huge hit. Peeping Tom essentially ruins a career. But Peeping Tom, much like Psycho, is a very pathological movie.

But Psycho is a slasher at its heart. Whereas I think Peeping Tom is like a very psychological. That's not really a horror movie. And it's very meta yes it has these kind of murderous elements it implicates the audience it disturbed people and it was like prurient whereas like psycho is like a roller coaster and i've never seen peeping tom oh you love it then you're the paper i know i gotta tell you what the basic premise of this movie is please it's a guy who's obsessed with the look on people's faces when they know they're about to die he's a cameraman and he builds a blade into one of the legs of his tripod and he like films women thinking that they're doing like screen tests and he stabs them on camera oh my god it could be remade about a podcaster now absolutely uh anyway you're gonna

hear me say anyway a lot okay while we're through this. Anyway, here's one of the most important things about Halloween that people who come to it always talk about, always know. Halloween's independent movie, very successful independent movie. Horror then becomes for many years something that is largely independent or very low budget studio movies. But in order to understand how revolutionary it is that in 1978, there was an independent horror movie that became such a mainstream hit. I just want to very briefly talk about studio horror movies

from 1968 to 1978. Because everything you're saying, your Val Luton movies, your Universal Monsters, horror was a studio thing. Right. And it was a classy studio thing. And you're not going to talk, why 68?

Okay, two things happened in 1968. Also, it gives us a clean decade. Sure. Two things happened in 1968. There were two Big Bangs. Studio Big Bang 1968 is Rosemary's Baby. Sure. There had not been a studio horror movie like Rosemary's Baby for years.

Rosemary's Baby is produced by william castle who was a purveyor of schlocky horror cheap thrills throughout the 60s such as you're saying you might gravitate more towards the tingler the tingler that's our sardonicus yes prowler 13 ghosts so my kind of stuff so a lot of the names oh Oh, yeah. Watch out. Well, what if there was a Tingler? But then there's also the Haunting, which is like a pretty Tony studio movie. It's also ruled. There's lots of ghost movies. Right.

Ghost stories. Haunting House. We'll get to the divergent, why it's so revolutionary to have a movie about a guy with a knife. Yes. But Rosemary's Baby kind of progresses. You're right. I've written down here 1958, House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler. Those are William Castle movies, very gimmicky.

Another thing I just think worth mentioning very briefly is that in earlier decades, you would go to the movies and you would see a bill of shit. And B movies were literally the backup movie and people would see horror films. They were the lesser films that were like the added value behind whatever the prestige movie and people would see horror films. They were the lesser films that were like the added value behind whatever the prestige movie were. And by the 60s and 70s people are going

mostly to see one movie. One movie. So you no longer have 60 minute Boris Karloff movies about a guy who opens a sarcophagus. Right.

But there's always a market to be making these movies for cheap because they need something to play after. But to me a crucial we're not going into this,

but a crucial 60s figure is Herschel Gordon-Lewis. Right. Who made- Master of Gore. Yes. Totally violent, cheap,

low-budget, independent movies throughout the 60s. It's not mainstream, therefore it doesn't really factor into this conversation, but I'm not going to not mention someone.

Godfather of Gore. The Godfather of Gore. Yes, I'm sorry. As the name of his documentary, I believe. I've only seen like 2000 maniacs wizard of gore is my favorite wizard of gore blood feast which is an egyptian themed thing right i believe there's a sarcophagus in that color me blood red the gruesome twosome

the gore gore girls all of his movies are terrific sure but it's pure exploitation i'm not talking about exploitation studio horror movies because exploitation always exists parallel. It exists throughout the 60s. But Rosemary's Baby is such a huge hit. When you said that there hadn't been a film like Rosemary's Baby for years, are you saying that essentially there's like a space between Psycho and Rosemary that's not filled in?

Essentially, yes. In terms of Psycho Universal, Rosemary's Baby, Paramount. The studios are not saying what A- a list top shelf directors could make a horror movie that we are going to take very seriously and we'll end up with oscar nominations that's not a thing obviously based on a book it's this very bougie movie about being middle class and buying an apartment and having children very specific milieu and we're going to i'll come back to that in a minute but i just want to quickly run down after that movie there is up into halloween something of a boom of studios

making horror films sure because it's a huge thing a huge hit and of course on the trend right people try to copy this there's not a ton of them but there are a handful i'm going to run them down and these are in order i put these in order okay and and weirdly the first one of these is the only one that functions as basically an independent film but it is a paramount film which is 1971 let's scare jessica to death which is a film i love i feel like it's a film people who see it love it yeah one of the all-time great titles yes a great title it's also uh it's got that great tag that now i've got a right uh something is after jessica someone something very very wet, and very dead. And literally perked his head up.

But it is weird that that's kind of in my, again, there are gaps in my research. But that is kind of the first, like it's a big studio movie. It's a Paramount movie. But it's just like this. It could also have just been an Embassy Pictures release. It was a Paramount movie, but it was like a rounding error for Paramount. Basically. Right. Cheap little movie. 1971 is a great movie that fox makes called the mephisto

waltz which is alan alda playing a pianist it is scene for scene the same as rosemary's baby i know nothing this but it sounds like it's really good a cult kind of movie again we watched this a couple years ago and it's like oh well this is three years after rosemary's baby and they were like so in rosemary's baby john cassavetes is an actor in this movie we should make alan alda a pianist it's the mephisto waltz mephisto waltz and he sells his soul to the devil to become a better pianist it's actually really good it's really fun alan alda pretty good in a horror movie context directed by this thing devil coming for my soul paul wendkos that's his name i don't know good movie wanted to mention it the next big one 1973 this is a big movie it's the exorcist big

one one of the most successful films ever made a hit we're gonna come back to it but i just want to say at this point worldwide 597 million adjusted warner brothers 10 oscar nominations right it's one of the five highest grossing movies of all time. Beyond that, though, also, the book was one of those books. I was not alive at the time. But I feel like it was one of those books that was on every coffee table. It was like a blockbuster book, too. Again, like, the book often helps here, right?

If you're adapting from a best-selling novel. Have you ever, you know, the cover of The Exorcist. It's like famous for scaring young children. I would stay at it. It would be there. I just decided this Halloween I'm going the cover of The Exorcist. It's like famous for scaring young children. I would stay at it. It would be there. I just decided this Halloween I'm going to reread The Exorcist and read Legion. Read Legion. Are you going to watch Exorcist 3?

I've seen Exorcist 3. I know. I'm saying, are you going to? You like to do a rewatch marathon sometimes. Yeah, we might. I haven't watched The Exorcist in years. Every July 4th, you text me about like political thriller made the cut this year or whatever right thrillers yeah yeah well here's here's the package not yet i'm gonna we can't

get into it but there's a great movie on hbo called or maybe it's on amazon now the package with gene hackman and tommy lee jones sounds good cold war thriller it's like it's just such a david movie yeah uh anyway exorcist 1973 huge hit weirdly this i was actually surprised by 1973 don't look now not a studio film i thought that this was an art film right it is but i thought mgm made it but i think that's just because i'm picturing the old dvd they had the home video rights for a while no it's yeah it's uh whatever it's like a british so it bears it bears mentioning but it kind of exists outside. Now, weirdly, by this time... Also classy, also based on... So that's the thing, is that a lot of these are quite classy.

A-list stars. A-list stars, but also has fucking... This genre... It's got some fucking... This genre now, in my chronology, only five years away from Halloween, is very A-list. You're bringing in a lot of big actors. Yes, Tony. And then there's just a few more.

But even at this point, I found it interesting that De Palma has not really gone horror yet. Yeah. No, he's still doing. Sisters is 1972. Right. That's horror. Yes. Yeah.

But Carrie is 1976. But then those are the only horror movies he's made. Because Phantom of the Paradise doesn't really count as horror. I mean, obviously, it's sort of horror, you know, nodding to it. No, but he is not yet a horror filmmaker. Carrie's United Artists. so that's a studio movie and then again based on as as you mentioned star driven now but these ones some of these aren't quite horror horror and some of these are going to come up again in a minute but just the the rest of this list now from 74 to 78 studio horror we're starting

to ramp up a little a little bit okay it's alive, okay. It's Alive, 1974. Warner Brothers. Larry Cohen's movie, Evil Baby. Stepford Wives, 1975, Columbia. Rosemary's Baby Connection. Ira Levin? Levin or Lewin? Ira Levin. Ira Levin.

So again, Stepford Wives, kind of horror, kind of satire. Yeah. But that's a Columbia movie, kind of a hit. 1976, The Omen, Fox. Huge hit. Huge, huge hit. Coming back to that in a minute yeah 1976 burn offerings united artists distributed great movie amityville horror before amityville horror david's avoiding eye contact he does not want to face the wrath people moving into a house

that is evil totally good movie but amityville horror so burn offerings is 76 the amityville horror book comes out 77 so the true story is yeah the movie the tree of course the the true story book that that that definitely happened the movie is when 79 and we're coming i know that that's just after halloween but i have to mention it in a minute the rest of these 77 audrey rose don't know if you've ever seen that it's a good little creepy girl movie. I think there's a ghost. I think it has a ghost element. There's also been a shift, though. These are all UA.

That's Robert Wise. But I feel like these eight years you've covered, right? It's starting out with like, oh, it's proven directors, international, art house auteurs, this and that. And often based on a bestseller. We're making classy films that can as you said be sold as a single feature right demon seed 1977 usa yeah julie christie sort of evil technology movie ben demon seed never seen it evil technology cool what if what if the computer what if you gave your house to a computer and the computer tried to uh make you make you pregnant

yeah and what if a witch hacked that computer 77 is also the sentinel which is universal which i feel like is a movie that people have come back around to but these are the kinds of movies that start to just have tons of stars from right like the 40s the sentinel is a michael winner movie and if you grew up in britain which no one here did which i did did. Irrelevant. What? You know Michael Winner. Obviously, he directed Death Wish as well. You grew up. Sorry. Wait. Wait.

Is the new shock that I grew up? Yeah. I thought you were just a big kid now. I am a big kid now. He's a very big boy. Michael Winner became a guy who would like, you know, he was like a pitch man.

It was weird. The director? Yeah. What was his column called? Don't look it up. Don't look it up. I don't know what it was called a pitch man it was weird well what was the director what was his column what was his column called don't look it up don't look at i don't know what it was called okay michael winner don't look it up winner takes it all no michael winner wrote a column for a thousand columns i think circle about restaurant reviews yes what was this column called griffin says where does your brain go winner's dinner winner's dinners right right right right he became this guy who would like wear a cravat

and say Britain used to, you know, Britain used to be better before and he would tail off and you were supposed to read into what he was talking about. And you were like, aren't you the guy

who made these like trashy ass movies in the 70s? That's so bizarre. He's an odd figure. Anyway, The Sentinel, I think,

is that set in Brooklyn, right? That's like a Brooklyn Heights movie? The Sentinel is indeed set in Brooklyn Heights. Yeah, it's a great movie. 1978. Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam. The Sentinel has like a cast of, I'm not mistaken.

Ava Gardner. Right, there are like golden age actors. Burgess Meredith? Yeah, if they made a Brooklyn Heights horror movie today, it'd be about the coffee shop running out of oat milk. Brooklyn Heights horror movie? What's the terror? Nobody

knew how to respond to that. He took a shot. I have two more things I'm going to mention. We admire you for that. Two more of these movies. The Legacy, 1978, Universal, Sam Elliott, and Catherine Ross. Love it.

Is that where they meet? Yes. Fuck. This is a very sexy movie. And a good horror movie. Oh, excuse me. Also, the poster is a cat divided by, and then there's smoke underneath the cat, and then there's an evil hand coming out of the bottom of the cat.

It's a great poster. We have, yeah. This is crazy. What is this? I don't know. Could use a little more Sam Elliott on the poster. It's a sort of like isolated, like they're in a little bit of an isolated role. And it's Richard Marcon, director of Return of the Jedi.

It's just before that. It's a pretty solid movie. And then 1978, the final one on this list, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, United Art. Oh, sure. Great movie. Yes. These are, so these are kind of. I have seen most of these films, just to be.

It's also interesting, a lot of these are repeating the same stars. Like you have two Christie movies, you have two sutherland movies like there are high class actors who are dipping their toe into horror and staying there yes now that is kind of the the extent of mainstream studio horror filmmaking between rosemary's baby and the release of halloween right so you understand with the list i just read and we described most of those movies, just how different Halloween is. Nothing we just talked about is any Halloween. There is nothing even, a lot of these are supernatural. A lot of these are vaguely sci-fi adjacent.

And then there's one other element that unites these that we're going to talk about in a minute. And they tend to be a little more psychological paranoia based. They also largely take place in very, david said very moneyed very high class situations none of these are about children no these are almost exclusively about adults because you because i imagine part of the calculation partly it's that they're based on these books that are often about but like it's yeah like we're gonna need a gregory peck or uh whoever right like we're gonna need a, serious star to ground this thing. But a lot of them are also about sort of like the threat to the family unit.

Yeah, sure. Like someone who has made a proper life for them. And a lot of them are, I mean, obviously The Exorcist is DC. So here's four of those. We're going to talk about the Mount Rushmore because you're absolutely right. Here's the Mount Rushmore of the four. And again, one of these is just after Halloween. But the whole point of this is trying to contextualize when halloween

comes out how could this movie be such a big deal how could it go so far against the current of the genre so the four movies mount rushmore right rosemary's baby sure that's george washington the exorcist okay that's abraham lincoln the omen okay that's teddy roosevelt amityville horror for some reason that's jefferson 79 yeah sure right now the one thing what's the one thing all four of these movies have in common okay so yeah sorry just to go through it again it's a rosemary exorcist amityville horror and the omen are the four these are the four most successful horror movies of i know amityville is one year after halloween but of this decade they're all about having children to some extent yeah well they are yeah that's true apart

from but even what is the main threat in these kids ben you know you know you know who i'm talking about you love this guy wait what the main threat in those four movies oh it's the devil satan himself yeah the dark prince of hell. This is the darkest podcast. The darkest podcast. Right. The four biggest, most successful movies

of this decade. They all are literally about Satan or the devil. Rosemary's Baby, what if Satan fucked your wife and made a baby? And you let it happen. What if you,

above all the love, sponged your wife to Satan? The Omen, what if your kid was the devil? The exorcist, what if your kid got infected with the devil? Right. What if you moved into the devil's pied-de-terre? Is, I guess, the least demonic.

It is. It's more of a haunting. But it's also, for God's sake, get out. For God's sake, get out. Right. And there's a demon pig. It deals with the sort of religious sense of demonic horror. I would say also, indisputably, the trashiest. Well, I know you don't like Am demonic horror. I would say also

indisputably the trashiest. Well, I know you don't like Amityville. I don't hate it. I just feel like it is the one... And I'm going to explain to you why you think that. Okay. In a minute. He's getting right in my head. There was some episode where you were like, Amityville, it was pretty bad, and we were in the car

listening to it, and Anna was like... And you hit break and it was like a 28 car pile up I think she I mean these are all films we love but she loves Amityville and she just went oh come on because it is you should rewatch it it's quite strong

I also recommend visiting I should rewatch it I should revisit what I also recommend visiting the Amityville house over in Amityville right there in Amityville. But anyway, okay, so here's the success of these four movies, just to contextualize how much satanic evil people were eating up for this 10 years. Rosemary's Baby, two Oscar nominations, 249 adjusted gross. It wins.

It won Best Supporting Actress. It should have been nominated for more things. As I already said, 597 million adjusted, 10 Oscar nominations. It gets a screen gets the screenplay win right i think is it's only yeah let me look it up because burston doesn't win burston doesn't win one at that point no she wins the next year okay but let's yeah one screenplay and sound yes okay which is fair yeah i mean obviously it's a it's a great year um but the exorcist is just an insane outlier of success but it makes people comfortable with horror the devil satanism and religious horror well that's also gonna say that's what's weird about the exorcist is that it's almost kind of pop like popular with christians right wouldn't normally be into that

they're into it but it's also so scary to them. Especially because it's so grotesque and explicit. That's the thing. You're pushing boundaries with The Exorcist that I feel like we're beyond... Beyond the gore, the language. Coming out of a girl's mouth. It's insane. It's so fucking good.

The Omen is so scary. It's my favorite horror franchise. It's one of those things. Friedkin, he's fucked it up so bad now. oh sure wait wait i feel like a couple years ago he screened like a at most mixed dcp and i know people who saw it and they were like it's fucking trash sure like what he has done to this i didn't he also did his his recoloration of french connection where he made it look like inside lewinwyn Davis and he was like, it was always supposed to look like Ronnie Pastel. I liked when he added the going down the stairs.

The version you've never seen was solid. Was solid, although I still don't prefer it. No, I wouldn't put it on now. No. Anyway. And also he made the Demented documentary where he talked to the real exorcist who's this one million year old Italian guy

who's like yes Harry Potter is the devil and you're like what is this movie about you just also want to constantly like scream at Friedkin like you're Jewish you're allowed to be interested in this but just acknowledge it he has the vibe of like anyway he doesn't

want to you know I just want to remind him and also Friedkin's The Keep is The Guardian just putting that out there. Well, look, Friedkin is the original blank check arc guy, in my opinion. You know, he bankrupts the studio practically. You've already did this for a while. You'll do him.

He'd be fun. I'll come on for The Guardian. I'll go back to my usual lane for that. Sure, sure, sure. Okay, The Omen, $277 million adjusted. Two Oscar nominations. And also like- Jerry Goldsmith.

Jerry Goldsmith. You know, has a song that's like. That was like a charter. It was like on the billboard charts. What's it called? Ave Santani, right? But the Omen is, we watched the Omen last Halloween. The Omen is so good.

But again, like. I haven't seen the Omen in a long time. What you have now. It's a lot of fun. Is like a stately apartment building. And a Washington DC, like a very like nice middle class house an ambassador's home and then amityville horror 311 million adjusted this is not a studio film it's aip one oscar nomination lalo schifrin but again these are like that's a big family's house

the omen is a big family's house the exorcist is like a modest family's house. So again, like Halloween is not like these four huge movies in any way. Now I feel like the context for what American horror is in 1978, I think is pretty clear. But then there's this other parallel thing. Now Halloween, indisputably, probably the first massively influential slasher. Mainstreams the slasher, sure. Yes, it mainstreams the slasher. But here's a quick list of other slashers, again, from this era.

Carnival of Blood, 1970. Great film. I've never seen, I've heard of it. Great title, obviously. I mean, hard to argue with that. Silent Night, Bloody Night, 1972, which is really early. And this is a very straight down the middle slasher.

It's also just so lurid and sick and not at all comfortable it's a christmas horror movie last house on the left 1972 does that count as a slasher it's in there and it's it's it's so scary obviously that movie is very disturbed obviously if you're talking rape revenge right it's i think of that as a rape revenge and of course it's a remake of the nick barbergman movie right but nevertheless you can't not mention that as the sort of West. Just in terms of a also a movie that is being presented to audiences is like, do you dare experience? Absolutely. You're going to faint. You're going to vomit. 72 is early for that.

It is. I mean, that movie is so distressing because it doesn't feel like Hollywood has even touched it at all. That's the other thing is that what I'm trying to now establish is that we talked about these four huge Oscar-nominated mainstream hits, and then there's, throughout all of this, this concurrent genre trajectory of these other films that are so gross and violent and dirty and nasty. And this is pre-

video, so it's like, you have to go to a theater and have this sort of crazy experience. And they always play for two years. And like, William Castle movies were selling this, this like people are gonna fucking faint you won't believe it and then you watch the movie there's a nurse there's a nurse it's like a spider dangling right right exactly right they were all about the sort of like carnival barker theatrics of like people are losing their minds you have to sign a waiver to get into the theater. We have a doctor conducting evaluations. Did you see when Film Forum did the

William Castle series like 10 years ago when they did all the gimmicks with the skeleton flying over the audience and you signed it? It was a blast. We are not exaggerating here. This was part of his genius was like he would hire actors to be nurses outside with stretchers and they'd be like, this last screening was a rough one.

People are signing waivers. There's things floating in the theater. We'll do matinee. We'll do Joe Dante one day. I fucking love matinee. The Joe Dante, John Goodman movie

is just like one-to-one a William Castle tribute. But yes, that's the whole phenomenon and people are buying into it, but in terms of what's actually being depicted on screen versus when you get to things

like Last House on the Left where it's like, we're not fucking around here. You're going to see shit that's going last house on the left where it's like we're not fucking around you're gonna see shit that's gonna upset right it's like this movie looks like it was it looks kind of like a documentary because there's no there's no production value right it's 10 minutes of someone being raped and 70 minutes of people avenging that rape but like quietly and the music is just kind of like this weird occasional jangle and you're just it's so can't look away.

It's when these films start to feel a little like snuff films versus something like Exorcist. They're nasty. They're illicit. They're dangerous. And this is where Halloween, this is the paving, this is where Halloween can land in a few years. 74,

Black Christmas, huge influential film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deranged, which is also based on Ed Gein as Texas Chainsaw Massacre is. It's by far the most disgusting version of the ed gain story i love deranged texas chainsaw massacre top 10

film all time for me obviously the best yes it is it is just the one for me but again like and we'll talk about this in terms of the slasher and halloween but like texas chainsaw massacre takes place nowhere you don't need to be afraid of that happening to you unless you happen to be. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you are definitely like, why don't these kids maybe hang a left? There's that turn back. If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you're in danger. This does not bring the threat into your home, which is kind of which is one of the things I want to start mentioning. Halloween does that.

None of these movies do that. Black Christmas kind of. But again, like Black Christmas is a weird ass movie. I want to start mentioning. Halloween does that. None of these movies do that. Black Christmas kind of. But again, like. No, but Black Christmas is a weird ass movie. I mean, it rules. It's very solid. But it's set obviously in a sorority house. And you don't know who the killer is at all.

No, not even at the end. And you never understand any iota of the killer's motivation. It's not about a killer. It's about people who are being picked off. Right. And I mean, again, it's very atmospheric. But it picked off right and it i mean again it's very atmospheric but it it almost feels like someone's just kind of telling you a creepy story yes it's much more of a fable right in like this sort of like an urban legend is what i mean uh the final

two i want to mention shivers cronenberg you have to just acknowledge that he's starting to do things at this time that are incredibly valuable to the genre shivers is the one that's set in the high rise yes yes that sort of infection breaks out again not a slasher more of a zombie adjacent that are incredibly valuable to the genre. Shivers is the one that's set in the high rise? Yes. Yes, that movie is great. And it's a sort of an infection breaks out. Again, not a slasher, more of a zombie adjacent movie. 76, this is a slasher, Alice, Sweet Alice. Great film.

I've never seen that. Iconic, young Brooke Shields, the great yellow raincoat with the mask imagery. A very, very solid film that is a true, true blue slasher. Okay. And I don't want this, we're not going to get into this, but you can't not mention that throughout the 70s you also have argento just to mention what else is happening at this time right we mentioned crystal plumage 1970 deep red 75 suspiria 77 we mentioned that on the um griff on the precinct 13 episode right yeah obviously

that's a cousin to the slasher movie right it's the shallow movie so like again like those movies would have been playing these are in the culture that then makes room for halloween but like these are all independent these are independent films these are made by people with whatever resources they have and these four things i just want to quickly mention are not slashers at all but the other big bang the reason i start 1968 is night of the living dead that and rosemary's baby begin a 10-year trajectory that by 1978 allow halloween to exist where it's just like in terms of how they're being made just how they're being made how they're being marketed drive-in double bills grindhouse exploitation and then they just like play forever and make tens of millions of dollars uh blood freak 1972 is a movie

about a guy who turns into a chicken cool uh 1972 children shouldn't play with dead things this is bob clark who made black christmas another all-time great kind of a zombie movie as well the 1973 messiah of evil which is a zombie movie made by um willard huck and gloria cats who then did howard the duck right. And co-wrote American Graffiti. Yes. They're Lucas people. Ultimately later

Messiah of Evil is just a totally low budget gnarly zombie film that I have a huge amount of affinity for. And this is like this is where Halloween

this is what's important for Halloween. Right. Like I've always said this. I've said this since I was in film school. He's always said this. People.

You've heard me say I said this about Verhoeven. I said this about Christopher Nolan. All the way back to since I was in film school. He's always said this. People, you've heard me say that. I said this about Verhoeven. I said this about Christopher Nolan. All the way back to when you were in film school. The history of independent film, right? If you look at the canon, they're like, here's independent film. You have Cassavetes. You have these things.

It's like, no, the history of independent film is these movies. The history of independent film is some huckster being like, I can raise $100 thousand dollars from my community to make a movie at the carnival that we have and we can make a horror movie at the carnival right and we'll make a million dollars that's the history of independent film and everything i've just listed is proof of that to a t as is ultimately halloween where it's like genre cinema horror exploitation pornography all of these things are independent film that they don't tell your independent films which is weird because everyone's like halloween independent film right but later they're like that but right at the time but like yeah but it's more it's just like guess what's

playing this weekend that movie you've heard about that's so scary like do you think part of that alex is a framing of like well halloween was independent film but then carpenter went on to do studio things and the sequels were studios and so it made good whereas they want to keep like in film schools right the idea of american independent film as being this sort of like elite classy thing sure so it either has to be mainstream respectability or it has to lead to like critical respectability. It wouldn't behoove any film professor to be like, look, you're all going to make independent films. So I'm going to show you a bunch of 70s New York pornography and a bunch of horror films made by people who live in Knoxville, Tennessee.

And I'm going to explain to you what $50,000 got you then and what you like. You would you would, you would be chased out of town. Yeah. Because that is not the official canon. Right. But if you want to, like, when I was starting to discover these films, I was like, the use of negative space and maximizing your limitations in these films is so much more useful to me than watching Stranger Than Paradise.

Sure. Because these movies, like, they have nothing. And they're good. They are. And they're like, they have nothing. And they're good. They are? And they're just, they're made on a shoestring. Like, you know, you have, like, Carnival of Souls, which I love. One of my favorite movies. Just, like, a movie that some guy made.

There's also a viable career path being presented versus, like, or you can bet that you are the one in a million guy who becomes Jim Jarmusch. Yeah. Because everyone comes out of film school being like, but I'm Jim Jarmusch, right? But I mean, like, Carnival of Souls is one of those special things where you're like, well, what else did this guy make?

It's like, he didn't make anything else. Industrial films, yes. Right, exactly. He made instructional movies. But as did Romero. Right. Right, but then, but like, it's like Carnival of Souls is so beautiful

and it has like one of the most incredible, like, edits I've ever seen. You know what I mean? And you're like, how did this guy not? But then the other side of that is a movie like Manos, The Hands of Fate, which is a mystery science theater staple where it's just like, not everybody who's like,

I begged my dentist for 10 grand. I begged my lawyer for 10 grand. I'm going to make a horror picture. Not everybody can turn that into gold. But certainly a lot of people, a lot more people tried than anybody thinks. But also, like,

that movie has more of a life, even if it's only for being bad, than the indie drama equivalent of that. Yes. You know?

Absolutely. Even if it's only as an object of fascination, these shoestring movies do have a more viable life than any other genre produced on that sort of budget level. And because people who love the genre can look at them and see value in them.

You can see some creativity because of how little you have. And there's so much of that in Halloween that we will soon be going over. But like, it's just, this is, so basically up until this point, this is what the genre is, right? This is a mainstream and independent sense of horror as a way of understanding when john carpenter makes this movie about a guy who kills babysitters how fucking revolutionary this thing can seem because what you have is movies about rich people who are families dealing with satan or movies about people in weird ass rural locations being

killed by zombies mutated chickens right leather face, what have you. Monsters. It's terrible things happening to good, morally upstanding people, or it's dumb idiots make a series of bad mistakes and get what was coming to them. Or like, you know, in the Messiah of Evil shivers, it's like, or there's just like some sort of disease, Night of the Living Dead.

Night of the Living Dead obviously has so many so much influence in this way but okay so like now zeroing in getting closer to Michael Myers okay so your fourth slasher mountain you don't want to get too close to that guy the knife's long okay so there's another Mount Rushmore here which is the slasher mascot Mount Rushmore

which I feel like is a Mount Rushmore Ben probably visits you've got your four guys on it you've got leatherface yeah 74 michael myers 78 jason 80 and freddie 84 right those are the four yeah those are the guys yeah i don't think four yeah i don't know that there's anyone who can really challenge no no those are the four but there's a little stone chucky who's like running behind the mountain. But Chucky, he strays from slashing. He's mostly making a joke about

Chucky. I think Chucky works at the gift shop. Chucky works at the gift shop. I don't think they put Chucky on the mountain. I just want to say, let's not act like he's not a knife guy. No, he definitely does knife stuff. It's just that halfway into his series, he's like, you know what? I mostly do bits. But you know what? I like him.

But you know who starts off doing bits? It's Freddy Krueger. Although he's less bit heavy in the first Nightmare. Yes. He's mostly just a scary guy. Number one. Looking at these four franchises, which Halloween is arguably one of the best.

Yeah, and it's also the earliest franchise, right? Because the second Texas Chainsaw takes a while. This is very important. So for the four above ground horror movies and then for these to a different extent this is the sequel section the legacy of these things is connected to what becomes of these franchises right right so like rosemary's baby has a made for tv movie that's fine but rosemary's baby is almost seen and you can see this from the fact that's the only one of those that no one has just like straight up

remade right it's almost seen as like it's just one of those things you don't go back to they did the fucking mbc version a couple years ago that also everyone's like so we can ignore this right yeah right it's one of those things like jaws where it's just like hollywood's just you're not you're just not going to do rosemary's baby right yeah so exorcist 2 comes out in 77 that's pretty soon right amityville 2 is 82 now this is a 12 million dollar gross 32 adjusted down from 86 so a huge dive no one yes wanted to go back and omen 2 is 78 right and so like david you're talking like amityville that has like a dodgy reputation it's because that movie goes from like a b plus movie i love amityville 2 everyone who loves amityville

2 is a prequel right it's the one it's about the original and it is made by an italian filmmaker whose name is escaping me it's a damiano damiani yes of course wow sounds fake and it is i'm seeing but it is just like it's just it is a sick movie like it is a sick movie i gotta say yeah it sounds kind of nasty it is like it is a genuinely depraved movie but it's the sick movie like it is a sick movie i gotta say yeah it sounds kind of nasty it is like it is a genuinely depraved movie but it's the one that like horror fans are like amityville 2 is a masterpiece but nobody in the mainstream but this is what i'm talking about where you're like okay what about the hell raisers and everyone's like well we all know five and six were a huge rebound and i'm like we all do like really we all know i have to watch five and six now we all know that

amityville 2 is beloved right but like But it takes the franchise from respectability straight into the grindhouse. It is no longer a mainstream thing. It is now filth. Well, then I'm aware of Amityville 3 because it was 3D, like many of three. And it's pretty fine. It has Meg Ryan in it. But it also has the poster where it looks like a dinosaur hand is coming out of the house. And you're like, wait, what happened to to this franchise it's like a goblin hand don't you think

also amityville has a problem in that like people keep moving into the same house and you're like the realtor should warn people you heard about the horror yeah have you seen this fucking movie impossible to not just think of the simpsons thing with the murder house with margins selling real estate. But anyway. My question was, so obviously the horror icon becomes crystallized later in sort of the Mount Rushmore that you established, right? all have at least, even if only in brief glimpses, some kind of physicalization of Satan where you can, in theory, continue it and go like, I understand what the central fear is, whereas Amityville is a little more abstract

so you can make a sequel that pleases hardcore horror fans, but like passive viewers are just like, I don't know what the thing is anymore. Yes. You know? For sure. Well, that's like, so Omen remains classy. Omen is like like damien lives in

in the circles of society of course we all know damien is evil that helps them that they had like a physicalization that exorcist does the same thing is the one with sam neill yes where he's like where he's like the president or he's gonna be the president or whatever yeah damien three and then exorcist similarly tries to remain pretty classy for two three is of course gonzo and great but amityville just immediately becomes something closer to the independent films right like amityville does not try to like you say just goes right into the trap yeah so like that's why those originals be like that's why those are still like a level films and amityville is an a level film but like with slashers they don't go from a to c plus they go

from like b to b minus or from b to b plus so that's why i like this these four slasher things like they become franchises with seven or eight movies most of which are solid texas chainsaw is the one that's not quite too gonzo yeah right because those all the sequels to that are weird well three is when new line is like we're gonna make leather face like right one of our slasher guys like freddy or jason and three i always was like i love three i haven't seen it in years i saw a print of it at alamo a few years ago and i was like oh this movie's not that good i've always said this one was great and four is the one with reese renee zellweger and the new generation. Right. The next generation. And 2 feels a little

like Gremlins 2. Yes. Very much so. But it's also like 12 years later. That's the thing. It's like they waited too long.

The director's sort of like if I'm going to do this again I'm not going to do the same movie again and they made something a lot weirder that people didn't really.

So like basically this is what I'm trying to say about sequels and Halloween certainly pertains to this. Like you can make a great slasher and you can make a so-so sequel and it's fine you can also make a so-so slasher and then make a good sequel and you can then make six more right and the other thing

that has to be mentioned 1978 is dawn of the dead which is the first sequel that people are like that's better like that's just undeniably right he had more money he improved on it's sort of evil dad but that's another reason that i wanted to talk more money he improved on it's sort of evil dad but that's another reason that i wanted to talk about 68 to 78 because it's sort of the night to dawn right era but like okay so there's two modes you can work in here and uh like something and halloween we'll talk about this like friday the 13th part two is like the one people think they remember right in the way that there's stuff in Halloween, there's stuff not in Halloween

that people think is in Halloween. Because of the sequels? Just because of the legacy of the franchise. Sure. Yeah, and also, I mean, Halloween also they mess with the TV cut of it. Well, we'll talk about the TV cut. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like, so this is what's interesting about, so all of those- But with Friday the 13th, the first three movies are what people think of as the first movie because they all are the same movie with improvements and they're all doing the exact same format yeah but you see how those four oscar nominated films do not become viable franchises and then all four of these slasher mascots spawn these never-ending because friday the 13th part two is quite solid yeah texas chainsaw massacre 2

obviously has its fans but it does there are then there's no reason to make eight texas chainsaw massacre sequels obviously it's been rebooted texas chainsaw is a superior film to friday the 13th but they nailed the sequel so hard that they could then go up to space i mean to talk i mean friday the 13th as well is like that's a paramount film yeah that's a studio film and that's the studio being like wait a second we could do one of these a year for nothing and make a ton of money and they just make a little farmhouse on the set like on the studio lot and they tell like sean cunningham and and what's his pants like you know yeah just one a year yeah and it's what it's either the fourth or the fifth.

I think it's the fifth where the producer is like, we fucking made a porno in the woods. Like where he was like, really no one was paying attention to us at a certain point. Jeez. And there's sort of at that point, like the studio's like, wait a second, what is this shit?

Like, but for a while it's just, it's profit. It becomes this well-oiled machine that becomes a viable franchise. And like, but again, so this is all to say what does halloween do differently than these films why is halloween so different and special even though it comes before friday the 13th and and it like so we need to talk about that but like it's okay the final girl black christmas proto slasher there's a lot of people in that movie olivia hussey there's no final girl right obviously there's no main character really obviously this is one of the innovations that halloween is credited with even though it's in texas chainsaw massacre sure there's sally

writing shot you know her face writing away at the end right but so you can't say the halloween invented that but what you can say is that none of these movies take place like on the suburban street that everybody lives on that everybody is like that's why this is the best movie ever made that's the thing here is that my point now that I've arrived at it is that everything we've talked about for this entire decade either is ignored

for Halloween to innovate its own things or Halloween plays with the things that have been done but does them better. Now I'm basically ready to like talk about Carpenter. Hi there. My name is Alameen Abdel-Mahmoud. I am the host of the CBC Podcast Commotion.

That's a show where we talk about all things pop culture. We talk about what people are watching, what people are listening to. We get into everything from celebrity beefs to TikTok trends. And look, we're not afraid to get a little controversial. We're talking about things like the Oscar snubs or is Drake really a hip hop artist? Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud available on CBC Listen

or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been like idly working on this since April, what I just went through. Yeah, we know. And you've been like idly working on this since April, what I just went through. Yeah, we know. And you've been giving us updates. You've been sort of warning us for months. Because occasionally I'll watch something else that will change something at some point I need to make.

Yes. But also recently I've just been watching lots of Carpenter movies. But it is like, okay, obviously this is incredibly detailed and specific and the kind of deep dive into context that only certain people can wrap their heads around some real nerdy shit but the thing about halloween is that it is it's just like a absurdly simple movie and it sure is if you haven't seen

it before which somebody might be coming to it for the first time for this series or if you haven't seen it in a while it is almost impossible to watch it and be like oh i understand why this movie is the most but i understand why this is still the slasher movie against which all others are measured because you look at it and you're like this is just like a good movie that's the way i saw it when i was 15 is i watched it and i was like that's good that's the whole thing like i had no complaints about it but i also was like that like sent like seismic shock waves across the industry the metaphor i'm gonna make is like it's kind of like when like i feel like you would get into like like punk and people are like you gotta check out hawk win like proto

punk and then you listen to and you're like i don't know it's okay i had maybe i had to be there yeah like i don't know this is fine yeah sure but it's right it's like showing someone casablanca and they're like well this is corny they're saying all this like corny stuff to each other. I'm like, no, no, no, no. No one was saying corny stuff yet. Right. Like or whatever. Like, but anyway.

But it is like the whole thing I was trying to wrap my head around for months culminating and watching Halloween last night is like, how can you possibly understand what a big deal this movie was? Sure. This movie that cost nothing. This movie that has no production value beyond its steadicam and its music right its big star is donald pleasant yes and like how can you and how can you explain to somebody even someone who loves the movie and loves carpenter

this is the 10-year runway that this movie landed on and now 40 years later you can just copy halloween and still make a pretty good movie why is that right there's a very small selection of movies where you could do a direct sequel 40 years later and have it feel that big yes you know like not like is everyone still ripping off halloween but the idea of like fuck we're doing halloween again but i think alex's point is interesting and true which is like if i tomorrow was like i'm gonna make a movie called you know arbor day what's the plot a guy kills some people right he gets out of prison and he kills some people yeah people would be like i'm excited to see that what kind of movie i like to see you know what i mean like

there's just trees the countries now it's's just trees. It's called fucking Tuesday. And it's like, well, this guy gets out of prison and he's going to stab eight people. I mean, look, I like Tuesday. I think there's some potential there. Put it on the blank check picture slate. Ben's not thinking to do a tree zone. You know what's good about Tuesday is

you have six sequels ready to go. Right. That's true. Tuesday, two, Wednesday. you have six sequels ready to go right that's true tuesday you're saying wednesday tuesday three monday is the prequel yeah right tuesday zero tuesday origins i like the arbor day idea we're like He's got like some garden shears or whatever. No, he's got like the – you know in Gordon Green's Joe, they have that axe that's like filled with the acid that they use to like kill trees.

And he's like an environmental activist who got like thrown in jail for chaining himself to a tree that was going to get bulldozed. And he comes out and he starts chopping people down. But that's – what I'm trying to say is you guys are putting gimmicks on it which is fine and people have done that. You're saying you could just do Tuesday. I could just pitch Halloween to someone and they'd be like, yeah, that's the kind of movie that still gets made and people still pay money to see.

And it's still viable. Well, that's the thing. The thing about this that I love, there are, I would say, many people, hundreds of thousands, I don't know, who every single Halloween will put on Halloween. Sure. Right? Which was, of course, the idea behind calling it Halloween.

Obviously. And this has paid off for 40 years with now a $200 million sequel. But this is a genre where all of the films I listed, except for the Oscar winning ones, right? Like these, the canon of horror is shaped entirely by fans, right? Some of these movies had positive critical appraisal at the time. Certainly there's your Pauline Kael diploma, but by and large, if a movie like Halloween becomes a classic or Friday the 13th,

it is because the fans are like, this is a classic. We are going to claim ownership of this from the people who made it. And we have decided canonically that this is one of the great films. And we as a community of people who love the genre are in control of film history for this genre in a way that like foreign film fans are not. And horror conventions and graphic teas and all these things like. Fangoria and... Right, but these are things that now kind of all at fandom at large resembles.

And it's like the modern Comic-Con is so much more indebted to horror cons than it is to what Comic-Con used to be, which was a place to buy comic books. Yes. It's hand in hand with sci-fi in that way. Right. Which is a subculture that consumes and owns its thing. The difference is it's cheaper and easier to make and i think it's more accessible i think there's a horror thing too that is unique within the genre of just like people getting elevated to being legendary status yes you know where it's like you are a megastar within this bubble but and then that but also

right that totally weird thing is like who's that six eight guy who looks like he had a stroke and right that guy's leather face in in the third leather-face. What are you fucking talking about? Don't you know who that guy is? He played the cop in four disparate horror movies who doesn't catch the guy in time. But this is the thing. People who love that and will line up for an autograph. These are the people of which I am one.

No one who loves the movies, the horror movies, has not seen Halloween. But they could watch it every 12 months. So then it becomes this question of why watch something that you know forwards and backwards? Why have I watched Star Wars every day I've been sick since I was 13 years old? Sure. Like, that's my first thing I do when I'm sick. So why watch something? But it's not

a mythology it's just designed to titillate teenagers for one night of sex and violence why watch these movies 50 times and that's the sort of like consumer swallowing the product that horror is and and like they just it's not about it as I was saying earlier, it is, I need to see everything. I need to watch it all. But it's also like, I just also need to, on a loop, be re-watching everything else. So, like, there is, you know, you could screen Halloween or The Thing or, you know, these Carpenter movies. It'll be sold out. People will always line up to just re-experience these perfectly made films.

You and I went to see Guns N' Roses in Concert, New Jersey the other night. First concert in 17 months. I mean, I was doing the math on it. My first concert had gone to in at least four years, I think. Oh, wow. That's a long time. I believe. Oh, it set the bar very high.

Yeah, I don't go to concerts very often. I don't like standing. Well, we thank god thank god but um we we had a long conversation in the car right back and you were sort of uh comparing the horror community to kiss heavy to metal and rock sure but you were using kiss as sort of like a perfect distillation of the thing yes where it's just like this bizarre feedback loop between the fans and the band that have always been successful but have never been respected as high art they've never been canonized as one of like the cool groups there's like a rabid sort of hunger for consuming the stuff over and over again repackaging it uh revisiting it merchandising it out the wazoo much like horror right something like halloween

a band like that could say to their fans what do you want to buy they would say what do you have anything right if it can say as gene simmons says if it can say kiss on it it should say kiss on it if it can say halloween on it it can it on it. If it can say Halloween on it, it can, it will say Halloween on it. I just think it's interesting. And they can be in the library of Congress or the rock and roll hall of fame, but it doesn't mean that John Carpenter is going to get an honorary Oscar or that people are going to be like legitimately as cinema,

as we like to protect it, we're letting this one in. They can be like, yeah, that's a great slasher, which is a genre of horror right but john carpenter gonna get another i feel like he will he could i feel like he probably will especially now that they do like six a year they should give him and also

it's just like they're starting to branch into stuff that you know like he's on a long list right right right right but that would be insane as someone who was... Well, it would represent the grand arc of these things. It certainly would. Peel getting a screenplay Oscar kind of comes from... It feels like some full circle moment of like, we should go back and fucking... Well, yeah, it's a movie that just

quotes Halloween constantly. It feels like them being like, fuck, we should pay some respect to John. It's just one of those things where you can look back at 1978 and be like, Halloween should have won an Oscar for score. I don't know what won in 70. It should have been nominated, at least. The thing is, I checked my best score, 1979.

I hope you checked it to put Halloween on it. No, Halloween was on it. I was checking my ballot, and I saw it's not the winner. I have Days of Heaven, Ennio Morricone's famous score. For any of the listeners who don't know, David has a... How far back does it go? It goes back to 1928. Oh, my God.

David has a spreadsheet in 1928, what he would give the Oscar to in every category and what the five nominees would be. And some people think, like, oh, it's just the main... No, no, I got original score there. But is that wrong? I have to now... And I was sort of shaken, because I think like, oh, it's just the main. No, no, I got original score there. But is that wrong? I have to now. And I was sort of shaken because I was like, obviously, I must have Carpenter winning score here.

And I don't. Days of Heaven, obviously. I can't picture it right now. It's a tremendous score. Oh, I could sing all of it. I could sing. I could book a venue. I could go to Carnegie Hall and sing all of the days of heaven score i mean the

halloween theme obviously once once all the problems are gone that can be a patreon bonus tier i'll be a patreon human one night at carnegie hall singing the days of heaven score live to the film that'll be great music orchestra presents griffin newman but i mean this is also the year of of john williams's superman score that's a good great score also his score for the fury which is a great score yeah uh there's a lot of good scores but this is but you're exactly this this is what we were saying in the car when we were trying to find a tunnel back from new jersey to new york fruitlessly is like the sort of disrepute disreputability right that's not a word what's the word i'm looking for i don't know keep going the disreputable nature of things like rock

and roll or heavy metal or horror right and then the sort of 50-year arc of these or 40 or 30-year arc of bands that are regarded like ben like punk metal bands loud vulgar trash as these movies all could have been and then 40 years later it's like well iron maiden sell out two shows at barclays center every two years that's 70 000 people buying a ticket to a band that has never had a mainstream crossover and it's like and halloween you can re reboot it and it makes 200 million dollars or you can repackage and people will buy the new blu-ray the new box set like these fans they belong to the things they love and the things they love belong to them but also this like this 90 minutes yes it's just like this perfect object but also that they create industries in a certain way where you're like, you know, maybe I'm speaking out of my ass here,

but like a graphic tease of things from pop culture are things that children wear to bed, right? Sure. I do feel like adults wearing TV shows, t-shirts of the media they like is a thing that really gets pushed through by horror fans. Griffin is wearing a Orko t-shirt. I'm wearing an Orko t-shirt.

And I'm wearing... Halloween Horror-shirt. And I'm wearing... Halloween Horror-thon. And I'm wearing... Hello, fennel shirt. Hello, fennel. But do we recognize this guy talking about sequels? Let me see. Turn to me.

It's the creature from the Black Lagoon. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is one of the Halloween costumes from Halloween 3, season of The Silver Jam. Oh, it is, of course. Yeah, that's right. Wow. Wow.

To be fair, it looks a little like the creature from the black lagoon no it doesn't david's stupid i get the point no you do black lagoon he's green

well he's green yeah green guy red red eyes well so is oscar the grouch he doesn't have red eyes oh i said i started

saying this before you said the red eyes he doesn't have a hood on but okay convention-based round appearances right is the thing that really formulates

from the horror community and demand we want to meet these people who otherwise would never be recognized in their grocery store we'll now line up for hours to to meet them for $40 autographs right um uh the cane hotter edification of uh not just the fangoria existed but that modern fan journalism if we can call it that is closer in tone to fang than things like Variety and Hollywood Reporter. Absolutely. Right?

And even the tone of shit like Deadline or whatever is closer to Fangoria, I feel like, by and large. Then you're also looking at shit like the endless re-releases, repackagings of home video releases across multiple formats. That's going to be my transition into Carpenter. Yes. Carpenter's career. Obviously, this is his third film this is 1978 yeah ghost of mars his penultimate film is 2001 right sure these are the this is 202 with no no quotation marks this is the era of vhs the first vhs's are made and marketed from ho from Hollywood movies in 1978 from Fox and Paramount 2001 I think is the first year that DVD sales overtake VHS sales

that's when your mainstream people everyone's starting to buy a DVD Carpenter's career lines up in a Venn diagram it's just inside the circle of the VHS era and he's the guy whose legacy is really formalized by VHS every. And he, as you say- And he's a guy whose legacy is really formalized by VHS.

Yes. Every one of his films, whether you have a Halloween clamshell, like if you're a horror fan, having the Carpenter collection on your shelf, these are just beautiful tapes of great films that the aesthetics, while obviously made for theatrical distribution, are intrinsically linked to home video. You made a point of re-watching this on VHS for this episode. I've had a Halloween VHS I've had for over 20 years.

And then today you took or posted a photo of your baby daughter holding the VHS. She grabbed it off the table when I was feeding the cats. And I came back and she just had my Halloween tape in her hands. Grabby little hands. Was that the moment you truly became a father for the first time that you felt the pride? It could have been. It'd be too bad if I waited eight months for that.

But no, I was very proud. She was close enough to the coffee table in a chair. She was restrained and came back from feeding the cats and she had my Halloween tape in her hands. It was very exciting. But this is what you're saying. Carpenter became emblematic of owning your filmmaker because he came out right when you could do that sure and then made movies that are lean mean 90 minute films that you want to re-watch

all the time and you would like to own them because they have beautiful artwork beautiful posters beautiful iconography and you want to have these films in your collection, but not in the way you want to have the Star Wars trilogy. It's much more of a personal thing. It's not like everybody owns Superman on VHS. Everybody owns M.A.S.H. on VHS. It's like, oh, not everybody owns the thing on VHS. Dave and I are obsessed with physical media. But I abandoned VHS.

Well, that's the problem. I've been trying to get you back to it for years. I can't have... There's no space for these fucking things. Go on, Griff. Go on. Well, do what I do. For years, I've been telling you...

Live in a apartment that is just stacks of things on the floor that I don't know how to organize. I've been telling David for years he needs to get a VCR. I told him I would get him one as a wedding present. I told him I'd get him one as a baby shower present. He won't let me buy him a vcr um i do think i i've started circling back around not that i need a fucking excuse for another collection but there's certainly vhs i held on to for a very long time right certain key movies but then also things that for a long time weren't released on dvd and even when they finally came out i stopped like pawning off my

old vhs's and started circling back to certain things because there are movies that they're movies where you have a nostalgic association to them in that format because that's how you saw it and even though it's not the proper presentation of that movie it hits some spot right i'm watching a a widescreen movie like halloween on vhs for the 10th time but then there are genres that sometimes are actually weirdly, if not benefited from that format, gain some sort of adjacent parallel power in that format. It almost works as like a

different cut of the film. It's smoothing over edges, it's abstracting things in a way that certainly helps with horror movies being produced on a budget, but also things where you're dealing with like patches of darkness you know and there are plenty of those in this movie yeah it's a dark movie it's a dark movie um their joke is that they couldn't afford lights but they also couldn't afford extras which is one of these many things that makes many of the scenes in this movie just staggeringly weird right and very very off-putting

in an entirely unnatural way in a purely mundane environment absolutely um there are i counted this when i wrote this down because when david and i went for a dad walk recently you were i was like i have all this stuff i want to talk about uh contacts background and you were like well that's fine because what is there to say about halloween we like the movie itself and i was like no we're talking and we didn't know your year characterized i did not say that this is also like one of my favorite movies ever and i haven't even talked about my experience with how i want to hear it and about carpenter but i want to say one thing first there are five sequences in this movie okay um four of which are short and then one of which is 45 minutes long.

Right. That's the construction. The back half is the final. Yes, that's the construction. This movie is prologue, Loomis at the hospital. Right. A bit of context in Haddonfield at school. Loomis coming into Haddonfield, and the girls going after school.

Then it's nighttime, 40 minutes in, and then that's the rest of the movie is a straight line. That's all connected together. There are five sequences. Okay okay i will say this i was terrified of this movie before i saw it i was this was the scariest thing in the world to me i knew what it was about i knew it was about a guy called michael myers who went around and stabbed people when i learned this when i was like 10 or whatever yeah i would i had never heard anything so scary in my entire life because i was such a big scaredy cat and i was such a big video store kid and i would look at these vhx boxes that would like terrify me and the concepts would terrify me if i come on tv they'd terrify me

i don't remember ever being scared of michael myers in that way you live but you lived downtown you did that's true i lived in a house in a cul-de-sac. I didn't live in the same. And I was similarly terrified. But I just remember being like, Jason is scary. Freddie's scary. Well, Jason takes Manhattan where you live. Right. Well, that was the scariest. He did take it.

Yeah. Well, Jason and Freddie are more superficially scary looking, I suppose. But looking at things like Basket Case and Creepshow and whatever, I'm just like, these are like grotesque. They're horrifying. Right. But those I would get. This thing came to life. Whatever. I would get that they were scary yeah okay so good um but then i was like

right around the corner from where you grew up yeah such right on sixth avenue where it takes place um but i'm not scared of freddie in the same way because i don't think anyone's invading my dreams i'm not going to any oh that's my ultimate food because i love sleeping and if someone fucking dares mess with that uh they're on my shit list uh i'm not uh scared of jason i'm not going to summer camp anytime soon when i'm 10 years i do go to the lake where you refuse to throw ben's jeans off the dock that's true okay for one that's the you're not scared i wasn't anyway but no i'm scared chucky because if toys could murder people i'm fucking i had second i had genuine problems yeah like not genuine but like i would get scared because once i learned of the concept of yeah there's like a serial killer what's that it's like a person who goes around killing people so michael myers is just tapping into that for you

it's probably the first time i'm hearing about it in a significant way okay what when was this i think i'm like nine or ten years old something like that so was this before after you would have seen scream which is a first horror movie for a lot of people i had not seen scream i think i was aware of scream this is before scream but and then i became aware of but i thought scream was like a comedy and you know and scream was such an mtv movie it's very meta and it's very, but I didn't see, probably didn't see Scream until a couple years later.

You guys talked about this once when Scream came up. It's like, there hadn't been a horror movie released in theaters like that for seven years. So a lot of people, that was the first time

they sat in a theater and watched a slasher movie. But this is interesting. Like, there's a crystallization of your understanding of serial killers existing as a thing.

It could just be a guy? Right. And also that you could make a movie with that structure. Right. Both are tied to Michael Myers. He becomes the face of that entire concept for you across reality and art. And then I see the movie as a teenager. I don't know when I saw it the first time, but it was on television.

But by that point, I'm a cinephile, a budding cinephile. Wow. Sitting there with your beret and your cigarette holder. While he's on the boards. I'm already appreciating. And then there's a... Yes. I don't know if I should tell this story.

Say it! Do it! There's a moment sometime in my teenagehood where I'm extolling Halloween to somebody. A couple friends. English people. While you were on vacation. Right. Unfortunately, no. Use of a holiday.

Just show up in a foreign city. I'm describing the scene where Loomis and the sheriff are in the Myers' home. And they're poking around. And then something falls through the window. A gutter or something. I think it is a gutter. And it's a good jump. And obviously, there's nothing to it. Right?

Great moment. And I think I described the scene loudly. I think I described it as a pipe coming through the window and for years my friends would repeat me saying like crash a pipe goes through the window which i don't think i ever said i think they it became a plate against sam exactly you like me you really like me there's if my if the two people who know what I'm talking about are listening, they know. They know what, they know. They would tease you by screaming Crash.

All the time. If I ever got excited about anything ever again in any context where I would become more animated, which is as bad as I do. Because I feel like you get animated a lot. That's why I was afraid to say it on mic. Well, it's part of the glossary now. It's in the lexicon exactly and so i don't know why i'm bringing this back into my life but the and i want ben to offer some of his ben's holding a carpenter book yeah but i want to just quickly say i also i cannot remember for the

life of me exactly when this was but there was two consecutive weekends when i was like 12 where i saw it must have been the sci-fi channel one friday showed all the halloween movies and i was at like maybe i was 11 and at like seven or eight o'clock i was like oh watch this and the next thing i know it's seven in the morning and i can't sleep and i'm terrified and the next week they did friday the 13th and i just remember these marathons and then but halloween similarly i was like well i'm not at a lake and i don't have any reason for jason to come after you mean friday the 13th yes yes yeah yeah however i do have this fear that some guy might just walk into this house and stab me with a knife because really the street looks not unlike my own right i didn't live in the suburbs but i still right i did you know i lived on a quiet street in london in new york city oh and but i swear to god and put down that knife i do think that's the brilliance of this movie is right it's like the the the and i've said this

i think i've said this on this podcast before but right like that the suburbs feel so safe obviously that's how they're designed see you know it's funny i think that the suburbs is being very terrifying but i wonder if it's only because of horror movies. Because they're quiet as well, but the suburbs are supposed to feel safe, right? They're supposed to be the place where you're like, well, of course my kids can run around here. But then of course

it's like, well, if a guy with a knife wanted to kill you, all he has to do is open one door. Right. No one walks there. This is why I find them scary. Whereas I look at slasher movies like as a kid and i'm like i live on the 11th floor i'm golden like getting to me right but like and like i mean one of the most brilliant moments in this movie is when she's hammering on the guy on the door and the light comes on and then nothing else happens and then she has to go

to the next house i mean it's so good and it's so unspoken that no one's fucking helping you out no i am really gripped me watching this movie for the first time and many other times like that's what's so magical about it and then like yeah like you look out your window and you're just like as they look out the window in this movie 15 times sure and it's just like there's nobody out there i am realizing this is why i think i'm so much more scared by supernatural shit another scary thing that's in this movie is just getting stuck into like boring conversations with people that live in the town with you god i that is another part of the suburbs that is the worst keystone to many a horror film of course that that early scene or it's like bad dialogue right yeah creak just kidding it's not an ad read sorry it's me alex cutting in to my own context full episode with one crucial thing that i forgot i had had it written down. I can't believe that I forgot to talk about this.

I lost sleep later that night because I knew that the explanation of this movie and this time period was not complete without something incredibly crucial. Okay, going to be very fast. As I've been saying, 1968 to 1978 is the period I am discussing here as a way of understanding how and why John Carpenter's Halloween landed with the impact that it did when it came out in 1978. The biggest thing I forgot to mention is that 1968 to 1969, Zodiac Killer starts murdering. 1969, Charles Manson. 1972 to 1978, John Wayne Gacy. 1973, the beginning of the Golden State Killer. 76 and 77, David Berkowitz, the son of Sam.

And starting in 1978, Jeffrey Dahmer. These 10 years that I'm trying to explain as being the period of American history into which Halloween is born cannot be properly understood in terms of people's hunger or appetite for slasher films, horror, whatever you want to call it, without first understanding the overwhelming rise in crime, serial killers, serial murders, random killings, and other associated fear that crept into the country at this time. This is where slashers come from. This is why movies like Halloween are separate from all the other horror movies I have been talking about that came out prior to 1978. Okay, back to the episode.

Ben, what do you have in that book there? Do you have some Carpenter Halloween stuff? Well, I mean, I just have it as we're going to go through. I'll throw out some facts. We can talk about all five of these sequences. Because I think we should talk about maybe Deborah Hill's involvement. She's come up a little bit here and there. Very interesting and very important, I think, to...

She goes hand in hand with Dean Cundey, I think, for this film. She, I think... Big influence on the creation. Looking at both of their filmographies is undeniable very important i think to she goes hand in hand with dean cundy i think for this film she i think big influence looking at both of their filmographies is undeniable that she brings cundy to carpenter because she works with him before she works with dean cundy on earlier films that she's involved with so his career is in progress her career is in progress and then she kind of brings him over he uh yeah right he i have yeah she she worked on it was 1977 satan's cheerleaders which is a good movie and also 1977 charge of the model t's which stars troy mcclure of course um and and and dean cundy shot both of those movies he didn't shoot assault

on precinct 13 and then suddenly he's carpenter's guy clearly when she's i you have to assume like this guy's magic like there's something he's doing here that we need to bring over and she also clearly is like in the scripting the laurie strode is obviously as has been historically noted a character she was very connected to and gave her hometown the name of laurie strode's hometown she's obviously very instrumental in shaping both the story and the craft of this movie. Some things from our dossier. I'm just looking at this to spice in. Right.

You know, like they also just came up with scares before they even had. Obviously, they were like, we scare every 10 minutes. We want this to be structured like a radio serial. But like Deborah Hill has the idea of like, what if your boyfriend went downstairs, came up with the sheet over him, but then it's not your boyfriend anymore. And they're like, great. That's got to be in the movie. Right. Like things like that. Like they're coming up with the ideas first. but then it's not your boyfriend anymore and they're like great that's got to be in the movie yeah right like things like that like they're coming up with the ideas first and they're like don't worry we'll we'll build a plot around that is michael's one bit it's a good thing it's great it's what makes it a real well yeah no the glasses and then he

cuts the eye holes in the sheet yeah which you don't see him doing yeah but he loves eye holes we know from the first shot this guy is fucking obsessed with eye holes. But he's got a mask. But you don't see him do it. I would like to see him cut those eyes. You'd like to see him just delicately. It's not easy. It's not easy.

No. And they're very symmetrical and they're the same size. They always do line up because sometimes it's uneven or they're too far apart. One is big and one is small. The way Hill puts it is, she wrote the first draft and it was mostly the teenagers. And Carpenter comes in

and layers in the Loomis stuff. Right. Which makes a lot of sense. Yep. Because Carpenter's the one with the truly deathly outlook on things. And they say this about Escape from New York, right? Where it's like, again,

he writes this really bleak script and Nick Castle comes in and is like, it should be funnier. This is the best thing about him. I'm re-watching now as I've done. And he's like, again, like he writes this really bleak script and Nick Castle comes in and is like, it should be funnier. This is the best thing about him. Rewatching now as I've done. And he's fine to collaborate on a dozen of his movies leading up to this and just wanting to be refreshed for the series is like, I just,

he just has the most horrible outlook on humanity. There should be a character walking around being like pure evil suffuses this man. And it's like, is that character depicted as crazy it's like actually at the end we prove him right right he's always correct he's spot on and then it's in those other movies it's like so what happens at the end it's like oh all hell breaks loose and then the credits roll i just love his nihilism it is it's totally refreshing and so

not and it's just not comforting and yet these movies are comfort movies for people who love horror i know we're still in the early days uh but i know of much of what's to come it is just kind of incredible how committed he is to these abrupt endings where it's just like end of story end of movie because he's a he's a set he's like a he's like a 40s and 50s guy he's the howard hawks thing it's like what more is there to do we don't't need a button here. Yeah, like the story's over. And I guess what's next with credits? Like, do we want to have the characters wrap it up? No, no. Right.

There's like nothing cute that ever happens at the end of a Carpenter movie. It's always some note of like lingering bleakness or anger or like a final spit in the face. Yeah. Or kind of shrug of like, I don't know, we're all fucked. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. That's they live a little bit. You see it in a lot of his movies. like, I don't know, we're all fucked. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. They live a little bit. You see it in a lot of his movies.

It's just so great. Yeah. Movies that don't have sequels. Right. That it's just, yeah, he's just so miserable in his outlook. But even, like, not to jump ahead, but the fact that he did not intend for this movie to have a sequel ever and that the ending is the body disappearing

and the guy being like, well, yeah, I mean, of course. Can't kill the boogeyman being like well yeah i mean of course can't kill the boogeyman well yeah hey kids the boogeyman is still out there maybe he's coming to you maybe he's coming for you next yeah also because this movie has no justification for what michael myers is doing it's huge this does not have the sibling pursuit is one of those things i was saying like friday the 13th people put that in their memory of this movie right but it is not in this movie that him and laurie strode are related right but it's something that you put there and at the end of the movie it's like no no there's just a boogeyman out there there's a quote from carpenter here that i really love about the what we're talking about that i want to read which is that when they were shooting the

final shot which i love and the shot of Pleasance's face. Yes, yes. Pleasance was like, I can give you, I knew this was going to happen, and I can give you, I can't believe this happened. Right.

And Carpenter was like, well, I definitely knew that it was probably going to be, I knew this was going to happen, but he gave me both, and he left the decision in my hands, which is the mark of a great actor. That's Carpenter's opinion, where he's like,

Pleasance is just like a guy who's like, I do any i'm an actor sure i can give you any face you need you'll you'll figure it out later right like he's not like no loomis would would definitely only do this like he's he's a swiss army that's a good pleasance yeah i love donald pleasance he's donald pleasance is the fucking best now i feel bad my impression at the beginning he's one the the most prominent people for me that it's like for 15 years i was like it's the guy from halloween and then i was like oh he was a massively famous but yeah for me just forever and ever well he's in so he's also in so many halloweens as well. I did just watch them all. He's in, what, conservatively six of them?

He's not in three. He's in one, two, four, five, and six. Then you've got McDowell giving his spin in the zombies. He's up through six. Six is the one where he's really on his last legs. I think you said this somewhere.

You said it on mic or you said before recording. But his first choice was Peter Cushing and his second choice was Christopher Lee. Both obvious, obvious horror margins. But aside from the baggage, the associations of them, they're also guys who look like they belong in horror movies. Certainly by 78, they've been in horror movies for 25 years. but you're also just the face right the bone structure on both of those guys the pushing looks like a skeleton man right who's like wearing a little bit of skin just to convince you he's not a skeleton right and christopher lee yeah he's got this long elegant

face and these very sort of intense eyes and whatever like you put them in a horror movie they feel like they belong there's something about Pleasance who feels like despite the fact that this character becomes so big for him and he does other horror movies and other carpenter movies and whatever that he doesn't totally feel like he belongs in this world without also feeling like oh shit this is weird that Alec Guinness is in Star Wars you know where it's a clear like I am gifting you the prestige. It's instead just like, this is like a real guy. This is just like an adult man who is now caught up in this horrible thing.

Also because if Peter Cushing had been in it when I saw it, I would have been like, that guy's in Star Wars. That's Tarkin. Or when I saw this, all I thought was, that's Dr. Loomis. Right. And the development of this is so, that's a whole other thing you could talk about. Well, Pleasance decides to be in the movie because his daughter liked the score for Escape from New York, which is wild. Or from Assault on Precinct 13.

I'm sorry, Assault on Precinct 13. Not right now. His time-traveling daughter. The budget for this movie was $300,000. He got paid $25,000. Pretty good. It's like, right. And 50% of the budget is the cameras and the lenses right and a lot of my reading i feel like

in this like independent phase of his career it's just been really wild to just like kind of get like more a glimpse into just like how random weird rich people would just pay for these things and it's just like some weird guy and like this guy like what does he know but he's like all right i don't know here's three hundred thousand dollars well also it was the the anecdote i read somewhere was that he was pitching the movie to akkad and akkad was filming mustafa akkad one of the all-time names we'll get back a great we'll get back to him yeah the message akkad right was doing this big epic yeah and carpenter was like i think i could do this for three hundred thousand dollars and akad like took a moment and went the movie i'm

making right now costs three hundred thousand dollars a day and it is driving me crazy if this guy thinks he can actually get the whole thing done in that amount of time i'm willing to take a flyer on that it's like can teenagers die in it yeah okay then you can have right fine and carpenter's not even like i have to make this movie he's just like i really want to keep making movies right this is the level someone's gonna let me work at right now carpenter's like also pitching to him as a business proposition where he's sort of i i don't think giving the full alex ross perry manifesto but sort of saying like here's what's been going here's what's been working i could work off of this this is why i don't need many locations why i don't need many actors like

all this sort of stuff and he goes like fine yeah why not who knows who cares like and i think by his own admission was just sort of like this is a flyer who gives a shit and then once this movie hit big he was like i am keeping my fingers around this franchise forever glad i didn't let this guy own any of this stuff i just gave him no money to create and like akkad's son is still like i know there's still weird shit with like it's a lot easier to make merchandise of the halloween sequels than of the original film but via cod you know cod dies in a terrorist attack um but um his son is now in charge of the movies and he was the one who greenlit the zombies right and then now the uh

the gordon greens right because the sequels had studio participation i think he has less complete control whereas anything that's rooted in the first movie it's like cannot happen without a cod son giving the thumbs up but also these people love money yes they've been minting money off of this for 40 years. Right, because they're all fucking, like, NECA Toys, which is the action figure company that makes a lot of horror movie stuff, has been producing, like, a ton of, like, Halloween 3, Halloween 2. And everyone's like, why can't you make Halloween 1? And they're like, Halloween 1 costs, like, eight times as much as Halloween 2. I had the McFarlane toys, Michael Myers.

Merchandise Spotlight. I'll get back to that later. I had that but everything from the I mean David you know I love when you narrate a poster. Could you narrate the Halloween poster for me please? Wait and not the Hellerween poster for Tyler Perry's. We'll do that later.

Yeah we'll do that after we do the box office game for that as well. The Patreon series why would you give that up for free? Just narrate this poster for me. Yeah. I almost did a bit though where I was like We're not here to talk hell are we Save that for Patreon Halloween poster very simple A great poster

Is there a tagline on this poster? Narrate it David Top of the poster Halloween Already I'm interested It's a great holiday we all love And of course part of the pitch for this movie also was like, wait, no one's ever called a movie Halloween.

I was going to say that. I was sort of like going through the archives. I know I've called out several horror films in this episode already as having some of the best titles of all time. Halloween might have the smartest title of all time. That and Psycho. I mean, it's hard to.

Halloween's just so fucking good though. It's just like. And it's in the font. The font that like you can still market a movie on yes the image here below the title and I also have the titles that big H big N you know I like this sort of yeah that's fun

great a man's hand what color is the font it's white and orange like a jack-o'-lantern sure man's hand dragging the knife across right you got a sort of four one two five knife kind of like image there right but of course that also looks like a pumpkin uh-huh and then the pumpkins got scary eyes as they do like a jack-o'-lantern right and then the tagline

the knight he now in No. In italics. Now, wait a minute. Wait a second. Came home. Now, wait a minute. I have 10 questions. There's no further answers. Who?

Why is this in italics? Where was he? And how long has he been gone? And why was he away? And what is his home? Right away, you're just like, the mind reels with how important this sounds. It's unbelievable how crucial these posters are to these 70s horror movies. Of course.

The tagline is so crucial. It's not the night death came to Haddonfield. Or it's like, watch out if you're a babysitter. It's not the night the killings happened. He, in italics, who who who are we talking about already this guy is the guy with the knife i mean who already this is already i cannot even yes begin to conceal my excitement for what this story might be to the point of like meyer's becoming the first real modern horror icon it's like this movie's telling you like this guy is important

he's the boogeyman right you know the you know the boogeyman it turns out he has a first and last name right he's actually uh has like a social security number and shit it's funny friday the 13th i would say bad tagline they were warmed they are doomed and on friday the 13th nothing will save them but that was saved by the fact that it was called friday the 13th, Nothing Will Save Them. But that was saved by the fact that it was called Friday the 13th. That was enough, I guess. To carry a nightmare on Elm Street. Is it not just one, two, Freddy's coming? Yeah, isn't it something like that?

If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all. Which is a great tagline. Well, Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the superior one to all of these. Who will survive and what will be left of them. Great. Well, that's the thing. Last House on the Left has,

to avoid fainting, keep repeating, it's only a movie, it's only a movie, which is like one of those taglines where you're like, what? What is this about?

But to your point, Alex, none of these other taglines invite the same questions as Halloween. I have so many questions. Right. And let's start talking about those questions as it pertains to the stunning prologue of this movie hi there my name is alameen abdul mahmoud i am the host of the cbc podcast commotion that's a show where we talk about all things pop culture

we talk about what people are watching what people are listening to we get into everything from celebrity beefs to tiktok trends and look we're not afraid to get a little controversial. We're talking about things like the Oscar snubs or is Drake really a hip hop artist? Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. I can't even say how many times

watching this movie I thought I have seen this ripped off 50 times. It's never been done better. I think this movie is great. I think the entire movie is great. My only complaint about it is, like, the prologue is, like, the best thing I've ever seen. It is. It is.

The movie, for me, is never kind of as good as the prologue, even though the rest of the movie is arguably the best of its kind. It's another one of those things, like Laurie being his sister, that you're like, this one thing looms so large in my mind. You watch the prologue, and you're like,

here we go. This is one of the greatest films ever made and then nothing is as stylish as that no i mean a carpenter basically says like cops to the fact like i'm this formalist i like hawks like it's so unlike that because it's this insanely showy sequence right but it's him doing fucking touch of evil when like orson welles was the exact kind of guy he didn't like who was sort of like but putting too much mustard on it is like at that point it's like what david sort of said with like crocodile dundee too at that point you're like well this is 10 stars right this can only go down to four from here right the beginning of this movie is so good right right it yes it's unbelievable and as you said there's just like there's no explanation we've jumped past something

extremely important which is the opening credits which which is already, it's already 10 stars. So good. A million stars. Just that, the music and the zoom on the pumpkin and the fonts. Already, it's just like, I'm in this mood that is so unusual for everything else I've just listed of what you would have seen in this genre for the previous 10 years it's just one of those things where it's like i know if i were a time traveler i should probably go stop 9-11 or whatever but it's like wouldn't it be cool david you were alive then you could have done that saying i could have done it i didn't know mark walberg would have done it you're saying you wouldn't even have tried but like imagine

sitting with an audience and those titles come up and they are unprepared for the movie and they're but just like the weird atmosphere that must have been generated also just that the score is so fucking aggressive right where even you compare it to like draws which is draws jaws this way is that a southern movie about killer underwear draws i think that's going on the slate as well you compare it to jaws you just sold another great horror film right but jaws is so much more which of course has wonderful music yeah it has a wonderful opening this is so much like jaws the music so much like in the way that it's like the killer has a signature the killer every time the killer

appears you hear the killer's little song well it's i mean the fucking genius of this movie there's the story that like he screened this to someone some distributor and they were like no thank you not scary they said like you have to well i'll find nothing scary about this movie um it's a young film exec said he hadn't made her scared at all and you need to save this film with music now carpenter says that person did later come to me and say like i was totally off right like did apologize right but but also he appreciated the note right but also that she was like it's an amazing case study and how important music uh the correct score is to the emotionality of a film whatever emotion you're going for yes i mean it's why the gordon green movie i would say almost is a successful just because it uses the score I mean I know he's like doing some

new stuff but like because that's still the fairly simple right the thing I don't like about the Gordon Green movie is when it goes a little too much where I'm like the whole point is Carpenter never goes overboard I think that movie gets a little overly complicated Carpenter is a master of like understatement and economy and just keeping things as like primal

and elemental as possible at the same time this opening sequence is so lurid and just keeping things as primal and elemental as possible. At the same time, this opening sequence is so lurid. It must have been so gross. And it's so showy. 1963, Halloween. The first thing you see on screen and you're like, so far so good. Sure.

Another year, another day. And it's all POV. It is or seems like one shot. It is one shot. No, there's three cuts there's a couple masks being taken on and off but it is an unbroken illusion of time um it's either it's three shots two cuts i think for when the mask goes on and off um there's this uh you know it was the last thing they filmed which is which is great and i think partly because they were just

like um we we don't know we gotta work we gotta work on this before we know um and there's moments where electricians would one run from one room to the other with a light cool because they didn't have enough with the light that they're exactly and like jamie lee curtis talks who's not a part of the like watch the whole thing happen and said like it was super exciting to watch it's not steadicam it's something called panaglide which was like a steady cam knockoff which is why it is less distressingly motionless than like the uh like the shining or whatever it does have a little wobble to it which i like ish right right because yeah because there's so much steady later it was less good at like a horizon you know being having a steady horizon like the steady cam is the king but it's like a knockout steady cam

but it's like it's just unbelievable and like when he reaches for the knife and it kind of loses focus on the hand concealing the surprise that is coming it's like because you could see that's the hand of a seven-year-old or whatever he's supposed to be but even just the first moment reveal of his face but it means well that but also i was gonna say the first moment when you realize oh you were watching the pov of someone right it goes from being like and i it's easy to say this from modern perspective but it's like this is the kind of camera work we associate with a horror movie at this point right it's totally new heuristic weird distance slow creep slightly shaky unnatural holding on the shots for too long kind of energy and the moment they like address him

and you realize like oh this is now going to be a language for the rest of the movie that i no longer know when i am watching an impartial view of something that's about to happen or i'm seeing through his eyes and that always remains scary for the entire running time um that first shot i love of them kissing through the door yeah but just like sums up everything this movie is going to be about even the future like even the present day stuff love that there's nothing 60s about what these people look like no nothing really that's true they look hyper contemporary to late 70s but it is just like it's so sexual it's like titillating and it's violent right and it's ultimately like

kind of weird and depressing but that's like the pop rocks and soda thing where it's like people like you can't do that right you have like a woman's boobs like covered in blood like this is so shocking and it's and then it's like and the boobs were being seen by like a boy right who's then stabbing the boobs he is he. He's murdering your sister. It's no good very bad. Don't do it. You're going to get thrown in fucking heaven. And the messaging too is really disturbing in a lot of different ways of just like,

you're trying to figure out why would he do this? Why is he watching her? What are they trying to say about her? The way she says Michael. Her relationship to sex. Yeah, exactly. Michael. They're not like and her relationship to sex? Yeah, like exactly. Michael. But they're not like assholes to the kid.

There's no moment. Yeah, you know what's great is that none of those things Ben just said are ever addressed. Right, but that's like, but it's Carpenter knowing that the scarier things are in your fucking mind. I mean, it's the thing I thought was so interesting that like the way he directed Nick Castle on set was Castle be like, so what's my motivation? What do you want here? And it's like your motivation is you start at this point you end at this point don't play anything the entire point is I want to make the least relatable character in the history of cinema it is impossible to figure him out so you're only projecting your own shit onto him because I'm not giving you anything right it's the funniest thing because Castle is like I did the movie because I

wanted to see how movies were made. I lived in the neighborhood. They would pay me $10 a day. Shot in Pasadena. Despite being set in Illinois, there's many hilarious incongruities of what Illinois would look like versus what California looks like. They painted a bunch

of leaves brown and would cart them from location to location and spread them around because they couldn't paint that many leaves obviously it's a safe leave later all right it's over get the leaves later when they're like at the school it's one of those weird california outdoor schools and you're like well this were in illinois for three months of the year it would be 20 degrees it would look like a john hughes school in illinois but it is but it just doesn't matter i didn't i never i never for a second until i learned oh the halloween houses in pasadena ever thought you can go see it i bet this movie is not shot in

it's what it's one of those things where like i i fall prey to this sort of movie logic too where i just go like oh i guess i didn't know that's what houses look like in this town yeah well it's also like you mentioned like deborah hill like she's from haddonfield new jersey i don't know why they say illinois there seems to be no logical connection it's the same way that nightmare on hill street is for for some reason eventually clarified to be also in the midwest it's sort of like something spooky in the midwest is creepier i guess very far away from things right um yeah the prologue is great and then it says it's yeah and as you said that shot the reveal where you go around his little face he's a little chair. But you're talking about the lack of merchandise from the first movie,

and there's so many things like him with the sheet or the boy in the clown costume. There's so many little morsels of iconography in only this movie. There were like five years before Akkad Sr. died where they were licensing it out, and all that shit got made, and now people want it again, and the old stuff's really rare and they can't reproduce it. There you go. That's the thing.

But there was a zone where you could buy like little Michael, Michael with the sheet, all that shit. I had a 20-inch plush Michael that when you press this chest, the theme played.

Pretty cool. He didn't say things. He didn't go like, Hey, it's me, Michael. Hey, Alex, you're my friend. My spidey sense is tingling. I came from the metal institution. All all right speaking of the mental institution sequence number two loomis at the hospital this features i think one of the greatest shots in the history of the genre

which is all the inmates wandering around in the field so spooky in their white robes in the headlights in the pouring rain and you see the look on his face and they're like are they usually allowed out he's like no something is very very wrong here and right away it's just like you've gone from this completely subjective wonderful flexing of technique to this just like classic rainy night and it says it's october 30th so you know it's gonna happen the nothing's happening now right and then they pull up in this rainy night at an insane asylum and it's just like now what's happening another thing is this where he came home from another thing i like is that like loomis and

this is kind of like uh well graham and manhunter where it's like this thing just permanently ruined him right like he's got some of the carpenter cynicism but it's also just like this kid just kind of broke his brain and he has spent the rest of his life being like partially a husk. Yeah. And you see that in his he plays that so well when they pull up. He plays it so well. And the other movies and the remakes and the reboots all try and contextualize that more. And I don't really need it.

No. You know what I mean? It's so much more interesting to just be like he hasn't spoken a word in 15 years. And you're thinking wow this this is a long doctor patient relationship but i mean that's why it's so funny because right he's a doctor that has a psychiatrist what does he do stalks around the suburbs in a raincoat with a gun being like i gotta shoot this fucking patient but he sets that up here when they're like why are we transferring him and he goes because it's the law yeah i have to and you're already like he wants

to lock this guy he's not like michael couldn't be saved he's like you know it's all that stuff is true and you're forgetting he does also do funny voices when kids approach the house which is part of his psychiatrist but also the biggest thing is that like this movie i mean it comes out of like four or five different places that all coalesce beautifully into making this perfect diamond you're saying the production or the narrative i'm talking production but narrative as well right but like production it's like there are four or five different thoughts that all come together for this movie to be this like perfect jewel but one of the key ones is carpenter is at a psychiatric hospital and he sees a child with like the blackest eyes the devil's eyes right and he just like that sticks with him

the idea of just seeing some words like there's just fucking nothing there like i just felt like i was looking evil in the face how does a child that young contain that you know how does that he was doing there on this planet he was volunteering there i was trying to get an answer on this who was i was carpenter oh carpenter was i don't know yeah i don't know yeah i was trying to get an answer on this uh but this asylum stuff is so tense right and then they crawls over the roof of the car that's the thing is like everyone's going like sort of saying like not getting the severity of Loomis. And he's like, you don't understand. I looked at him. Right.

It's over. You look at this. This is not anything like what anyone else has dealt with before. And he's not a crackpot. He's a psychiatrist. Right. He's a doctor. Yes.

It's right. It's in the sequels he gets crackpot-ier, I would say. No, here he's a measure of authority. Yes. Who literally says there's no soul inside that body. He's evil. He's gone. The evil is gone. We showed up too late. The transfer.

And this movie is about Michael Myers said evil golem. He gets some coveralls. He gets a mask. He goes around stabbing people. He does come home. But, of course, it's all in the sequels that he's chasing Laurie for a reason. No reason here.

There's no reason here. I think it's just because she drops the key off. Yeah, there's no other reason. And he just sees her and then has imprinted, like, I have to get her. Now, it makes sense, obviously. You watch this movie movie and you're like what should we do for a sequel you're like well we have to explain why he was so fixated on her sure but it's better that we but he's not right he's not fixated enough like he kills a bunch of other people he does but then he is after people he doesn't even see interact with her yes like people who as far as he knows don't know her at all they're just in

the same they're just in his path or whatever that's his type but yeah so like but then he does kind of you know by the end you know she's moving from house to house but the weird thing this movie kind of starts to crystallize as a trope is the like virginal final girl thing which carpenter has always argued was totally like right he's like i wasn't trying to make a movie where people have sex get punished and the final girl's a virgin i just made a movie you didn't have to rip it off but also what's interesting is the two kind of like logic problems he's solving are why does laurie survive why is she the final girl because she's the only one who's not distracted right it's not that she's rewarded for being virginal. It's that all the other girls have active social lives and are having fun.

Letting other people in the house can be duped. They're a little more, right. But she's also not virginal in a high and mighty way. She's kind of a little shy and introverted versus the other babysitters. It's an extrapolation of the fact that she's just kind of a loner. She's sort of weird. She's sort of like off in her own world. She's the weird one in her friend group.

Exactly. And the other thing he said is that like it's not about her being rewarded for the fact that she hasn't had sex. The whole like end point of the movie is her thrusting this giant phallic thing into his chest. Like it's as much about her like sexual tension inside of her building up to a boiling point but you're right as well that i mean of course the sex and murder is all mixed up in this movie and right there's the opening scene but also later there's right you know the girl getting strangled while she's topless and he's that's all in there but you're right that it's more like kind of that spooky especially if you're a parent in the audience audience, thing of like, oh, my God, we're putting teenagers in charge of our children in our houses.

I think it's adding another illicit element. Yeah, but it's also like everything just feels so – everyone's opening doors and just being like, you know, like, just wait there for a minute. I'll be back. Right. It's all too loose. Well, and this inherently kind of creepy concept of like I've hired a teenager to watch after my child are they responsible enough and then when you leave they let some fucking doofus guy but it's all kind of a like it's that thing of like i didn't sign off on this dude my mom who lived

she grew up in utica which is a city but you know like kind of like jesus uh kind of like this and it's like obviously like no one had, ever locked the door or anything. Well, this is total, like, latchkey kids. Like, these kids, as the movie so totally embraces and also doesn't address, like, this is a generation of kids that don't have parents around. This is the late 70s. Yeah. These kids are on their own. But like I was saying, I just want to continue to compartmentalize.

Sequence three, Haddonfield, Halloween. are on their own but like i was saying i just want to continue to compartmentalize sequence three haddonfield halloween blumis hospital over evil is gone and then all like the introduction to laurie strode and jamie lee curtis who's dressed so like school marmy very conservative compared to her friends like i don't know she could fucking be killing it right now in these clothes don't you think like the long pants i'm not saying that saying that there's anything unseemly about the way she's dressed. I'm saying compared to Annie. She's less. Yeah.

She's less Annie and Linda. But like, this is where I think as we've all researched, like the, the Deborah Hill influence comes in the sort of like Laurie's sense of her character and her responsibility or forgetting her school book. And throughout all of this, like the music is doing so much heavy lifting because it's daytime it's mundane it's kids going to school and then you're just hearing this pulsating flexing music with these super wide

shots from across the street just watching these people walk around and you're like after the pro log like you're saying griffin it's like is this someone's pov why are we across the street watching them walk around you're just on that knife set of tension all the time right it's that thing where i just think it remains the most effective thing that horror movies can do with their camera which is personalize the camera at least even in spurts of course right It connects it to the psychology of, in this case, the villain. Right. And then ultimately kind of uses your identification with the villain to watch the heroine. Right.

From afar in a way that's incredibly tense and uncomfortable. And then it just becomes like a series of opportunities for him to compose these immaculate frames of Michael's. Sorry, we need to talk about the shape of the shape's shoulder right just standing there with this heavy breathing on the soundtrack heavy breathing that is so iconic it was the end credit stinger of the last halloween movie it was like yeah you can just put that at the end of the credits with no footage and people are sitting there at the theater going that breathing that's the good breathing like it's good breathing and the every shot of holding off on the reveal of him with his shoulder in the frame from across the street watching these just like well like you're and you're talking about the shot of her in the class yeah and she looks

out the window god so iconic and scary because there's also something about being in the classroom like in school and knowing that that thing is just lurking outside all the lurkings like him by the hedge him among the laundry right then the classic horror movie thing now that i feel like horror movies now try and amp up a little with a sting or a noise of the you see someone you look away the someone is gone. That's the kind of thing, as I'm saying from my long context, all new. All things that every movie I listed prior to this, you don't have any of that.

There's something about that classroom shot that just holds for a weird amount of time. The reveal of him there, and then he's just lingering, and nothing further is happening, and it just, your blood boils more and blood boils more and more if you see something aberrant once yes you don't think there's anything wrong with it you're just like okay right that's weird weird thing i saw right that's weird there's it's halloween there's some guy outside in a mask and then the third and fourth and fifth time you just see her performance which is really subtle and well

modulated being like am i seeing things what is going like it's but in the classroom when they're having this kind of very silly but very fun conversation where their fate never changes you're all subject to your own fate yeah the kind of thing that honestly you could just echo that in the new ones like you could bring all that back because now that's become lori's 40 years i mean this is a boring point but like what you're saying is like this movie has sort of flashiness to it that is not in earlier horror. And now feels like so artful and quiet and not splashy at all. Even to pay homage to this now, you couldn't be this subtle. This is the whole thing with the Green movie.

Yeah. Where you're like he's trying his best to pay homage, but it's still a Blumhouse movie in 2018 that needs to be more elaborate and the kills we were talking about this last night like you have to look at now all circling back full circle to pre-halloween you have to look at independent like house of the devil yeah type like i was gonna say that's the closest it is to where it's just like it has very little money and it's just like this creepy thing that movie is, but it's also going for, like, you know, this is like a 70s vibe. It's trying to summon that.

This movie is just going for efficiency. His lean Howard Hawks, B-Western brain efficiency of like, let's just get in. Good guys, bad guys, confrontation, get out. Yeah, also like, I mean, the Gordon Green Halloween has like 15 different perspective points. Yeah, also, like, I mean, the Gordon Green Halloween has, like, 15 different perspective points. That's the, yeah, it's got too many characters. Right, it's got the podcasters,

it's got the crazy doctor, it's got her, her friends, her mom, her grandmother. Like, this film has an ensemble. It has supporting characters, like, you know, Linda and Annie, and, like, you know, like, it has these... But it's like you have three girls and the doctor.

Yeah, and then, like, you know, the nurse has a scene, the cop has a couple scenes right people are sharing scenes with yes they are yeah 100 and obviously tommy eventually will be played by tom paul rod in in halloween six of course um you know her her baby city uh-huh um and things like that like the sequels are always trying to go back to this movie and be like, who haven't we plugged? And now Kyle Richards, the girl, is in the new one? Yeah, Kyle Richards is going to be in Halloween Kills playing Lindsay again. Which is great. Who is the one who is now the real housewife?

I hope Jamie Lee Curtis is still babysitting her in this movie. She is now one of the real housewives. Right. And is the girl who gets shot in Assault on Precinct 13. Correct. Yeah. Lindsay Wallace. Is she? I thought it was the other Richard sister who gets shot in assault on precinct 13. Correct. Yeah. Um, Lindsay Wallace.

Is she, I thought it was the other Richard sister who gets shot. I think it's Kim Richards in assault on precinct 13. Are they Kyle's housewives? They were. Yeah. They're both in the universe. Yes.

Okay. And, uh, but I hope she's still, I hope that the plot of the new one is just like Laurie's babysitting her. Even though she's a 50 year old woman but laurie yeah i'll babysit you she's got like a shotgun or whatever because anyway can we just can we zoom out for a second and talk about two two fundamental things i don't know how

much new we have to say about them but i do feel like we have to stop we just have to save the shape as much as possible okay he's called the shape Anthony Michael Hall is going to play Tommy in the new in the green movie Paul Rudd plays him in Halloween 6

they couldn't get Rudd well it's complicated Halloween Kills is ignoring Halloween 6 but the thing is you couldn't tell Rudd has aged at all

that would be a big issue where's your mom Brian Andrews like just stopped acting I forgot I forgot that well I knew that it Brian Andrews just stopped acting. I forgot that... Well, I knew that it ignored 4, 5, and 6. I forgot that...

It ignores 2. I forgot that it ignores 2. That's the thing it does that's wild, that there's a Halloween sequel about Jamie Lee Curtis many years later that is very indebted to 2, and then they did another one that ignores 2. And they both are,

what if we check in with Laurie Strode later? Well, choose your own adventure right and one of them's 20 and one of them's for one's 20 and one's 40 and they both are about trauma they're like but but she has different traumas and one is she's like i have to get my brother and the other one is like that fucking guy came after me that one time do you like the 20 or the 40 better i think i think the 40 is probably better i have a soft spot for the 20 the 20 is so close to being a good movie i always had a soft spot for it i even had a poster for it my basement great post and then anna had never seen it we watched it before it's like the new one came out 22 minutes long it's like one of these things where i'm like how is this overall

the credits come up at like 77 minutes. It's so short. It's also, I was like, oh, this movie's good. It's fun. We love 90s, whatever, faculty. Very 90s, very dimension. And we watched it and I was like, this movie's kind of bad. It's not that good and you really want it to be good because she's good and Adam Arkin isn't and he's really good.

There are people in it who are giving you such a Josh Hartnett. Wasn't she the one that got it made, Jamie Lee? She was the one, because I feel like Carpenter and Debra weren't involved. For H2O, you're saying? It's also, while they called it H2O. It's not wet.

It's not wet. That's the problem. Carpenter has no real involvement between three and kills, right? It's three's the last one. No, until Halloween 2018. I'm sorry. That's what I mean.

Yes. But three's the last of the original run that he is taking. After that, yeah. We just can't get over that he's called The Shape. I know. Well, so here are three things I want to say. Oh, I thought it was two. You've added another thing.

Because of The Shape thing. Oh, okay. The Shape thing is big. I think it ties to Carpenter's whole thing about just like, no, this isn't a character, right? This is like a thing. This is a force. And in his script, he does not use the words Michael Myers between the opening prologue and when Loomis names him at the end of the film. That he's always described as The Shape.

Because he's like, at that point, he's not Michael Myers anymore. He's The Shape. The Shape is some other fucking thing. Whatever existed in that kid before is gone. It's just so awesome that everyone's like, the boogeyman, the boogeyman, and on the page, he's like, The Shape. The Shape, right. Doesn't call him the boogeyman.

It's just, what a decision. It's not even like them calling the alien the be funny in the big trap on set the shape right like he wrote is the shape the whole thing was the shape he's credited as the shape it's the shape right nick castle as you said is like i live close by i'm friends with this guy i've never been able to spend every day on a movie set i want to watch the whole process they'll pay me ten dollars i can do this There are like four or five shots where it's not him, which speaks to the fact that Carpenter was like,

it doesn't matter. Just have someone do a thing. Like, put the hands in and touch it. Like, whatever. You know, there's no, like, continuity of character that's necessary here because I'm telling everyone to do nothing. Like, they're blazing through this. Right, just get it done. The two things I think we need to talk about a little bit are the mask.

Now that I got the shape thing out of the way, I'm saying. The mask and Jamie Lee and sort of the process of getting to those two things. Alex, do you know, because I feel like I hear contrasting things all the time and I don't know if it's just like. She is Janet Leigh's daughter. She is. Okay. Can confirm. Yes, I do know that. And that's pretty much why John Carpenter cast her and then later he was like, this is a good actress. But wait, is her father... Tony Curtis.

Oh, yeah, right. Okay. I heard that. I can confirm all of that. It's Leigh and Curtis but Leigh is spelled differently than her mother's Leigh. Oh, got it. And she's also technically Lady Hayden Guest because she's married to Christopher Guest who is a lord. People always forget that she's a... He'sden Guest because she's married to Christopher Guest who is a lord people always forget he's a former lord people always forget that she's

been married to Christopher Guest this whole time the whole time the parliament said be our guest and she said yes yes exactly I didn't think you topped the oatmeal thing and there's going to be a third one I don't know where it is the oatmeal thing. And there's going to be a third one. Okay, all right.

I don't know where it is. I don't know where it's going to come from. So, Griff, do you want to talk about the mask? Or what was the actual... Well, let's say Curtis first. Because, right. Like, there was the actress he wanted to hire first who was the daughter of the woman from Lassie.

Who was a young... I'll find her name. ...actress at that point. I want to say Lockhart. Yeah, and Lockhart. Yeah. He wanted her. She was busy.

He learns about how Jamie Lee lee is janet lee's daughter that's the whole thing that would be so fucking cool to get the daughter of the woman from psycho um she uh you know her mother had kept her from being in i want to look this up because it's had had stopped her from being in um fuck what is it some other movie where she would have played the kid. The Exorcist, Jesus, obviously. Oh, wow, yeah. Because her mother was very protective of her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And this is her first movie, obviously. Right. After the first day. She was on TV at this point? She had done some TV pilot that didn't go and whatever. After the first day, Carpenter calls her on the phone i think she thinks she's about to get fired that she's blowing it exactly and says darling i just

want to tell you how great today was she says it's never happened to me again it was so nice like i loved making this movie she's always so positive about him and this movie but also is like i don't like horror movies they're not what I like as an audience member. I've never had an affinity for the genre, but I also, once I got famous, did not distance myself from it and disown it.

Right. She didn't thumbs down Prom Night and The Fog. She does other horror movies after this. There's that Scream Queen sort of thing that kind of follows her

and some of the other actresses working in horror. But she doesn't brush it off. And there's no one, arguably, who comes from horror, elevates to her level, and wears it as comfort. Yeah, especially recently. She really is out there with the new ones being like,

yeah, this is just my thing. I've done other things. Everyone loves me. People come up to me and they say Laurie Strode or they say Freaky Friday or they say True Lies. Whatever. But I also love that nepotism, everyone's favorite subject on Twitter in the film industry.

They like to realize that people are related to other people. Right. She has always been like, yeah, I absolutely only got cast because my mother was the one from Psycho. I understood that. That was an opportunity that was an advantage that most people did not get. And my job was to then be as good as I could possibly be. Well, she was good.

She started good and she became, I watched the i watched the um the like the bonus scenes filmed for the tv edit that they shot during halloween too which hint at the uh family that's when they're retconning but even in those scenes for obviously by halloween too i was watching them and i was like wow she just leveled up as talent so quickly even like in those scenes such a different performance it's very interesting she just immediately just became in like a much more instead she's very good in this movie i mean it's also watching the scenes of the same character two years later and i'll re-watch to closer to halloween i suspect but she just got so i was just like wow this is like it cuts from the scene in the movie to the scene they filmed two years later and she's just doing so much more.

I think not exclusively, but oftentimes the defining trait of a movie star versus like an actor, a screen actor is like how compelling they are to watch in stillness. Well, she spends a third of this movie either alone or talking to children. Right. Which is incredible. And that's so good with the kids to that scene scene where he's like well can you make popcorn can we ice cream and she's like yes it was it was killing me how many times they say the word popcorn in this movie and there i was watching it with none she's good with people it's this the kids want so they she says you already ate popcorn and they say how about some more

it makes so much but she's she does spend like probably from minute 50 to minute 80 without any other adults present and she is compelling to look at looking at things which is a thing that you kind of can't like teach or develop uh she also just has a fascinating face i do think it's interesting that she's the only one who is actually a teenager in this and in certain ways she genuinely does read as the most mature even though she's like 19 playing off of pj souls who's like 27 and married to dennis quaid and like living a fucking life and it's just like she has a certain mature intelligence just on her fucking face yeah she's great that makes her a really strong central kind of grounding

force for this whole thing do you want to talk about the mask yeah so this is the question i was going to ask you well that's i like when he says smoking i think that's really cool what about when he says somebody stop me yeah that's another standout thing about that line is nobody can't no that's what's so great about it it's a real flex what about when he when he dances and his eyes pop out of his head well right that's fine what about when he turns to a cartoon wolf and his draw drops and his tongue rolls out like a red come out of his ears yeah the eyes pop out um my question about the mask is what if there was a son of the mask my my question

about the mask is because i feel like I've heard both things. I don't know if it's just the people like whichever version of the story. Did Shatner ever make any money off of this? Oh, I have no idea. No, I don't think so. I feel like if he did, he would say so. Right.

The story that... And this was sort of in the lowest point of his career. Yeah, the story that JJ found here that's really funny from Carpenter is, I mean, obviously the story first is Tommy Lee Wallace, who worked on this movie and eventually makes Halloween 3 and rules, had a clown mask, and then he's like, and I got a Captain Kirk mask and I painted it white

and kind of cut the eye holes bigger. And they were like, that thing is spooky. But Carpenter walked up to Shatner at a convention once it was like hi i'm john carpenter and he says he was on his cell phone and didn't look up wow i don't give a shit wow but um it is fascinating i just remember as a kid for the first time learning that fact and then once you know it even though like michael myers exists as his own distinct entity you can't once you know you can't stop seeing the shatatter face in it i want to ask your opinion on this alex they've never gotten the mask right again it's weird weird and sometimes the mask is so bad that you're like this is like

like halloween five or whatever i'm like this is halloween five the mask is the only thing you have it is wild and it's like ill-fitting and like four and five it has no texture and like the hair gets really wonky yes and the other controversial thing is the ebb and flow of the eyes yeah especially in h2o where it's all eyes where you can see the actual eyeballs inside the mask but then h2o also has a couple scenes where it's like a cgi mask right like doesn't the design change well You're thinking of Son of the Mask. But it's just so strange because obviously Jason

it's a hockey mask. It does change. Sometimes there's different colors on it and stuff. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's red. It's pretty easy. The basic silhouette of the thing remains vaguely the same. Leatherface's mask they keep that consistent through the

Freddy basically looks the same except in two when he looks really different and it's weird yeah it evolves and devolves but it's all

from the same basic sometimes this mask looks so smooth and just like it just looks dumb and kind of weak it's just a testament

to how damn good this movie is that this looks so good and with more money they never get this right they got it right in the green movie I didn't love how he looked it's just where's this looks good this movie is that this looks so good and with more money they never get this right yeah they got it right in the movie i didn't love how he looks okay they do a little too much that's an example of like in this movie they go to the the five and dime and they paint a halloween mask right in the david gordon green movie they probably spend ten thousand dollars on molds and fabrication it's fascinating and you you you in the cheaper

sequels you underthink it in the 20 million dollar blumhouse movie you overthink it yeah and this one is just like like i said many things in this movie all oft imitated never improved upon i also think you also don't get that close to it in this i believe i will say i believe for the you know there's always stories where they're like we found the original mask and we made a mold of it right it's a classic maltese falcon right exactly but it's like it's the magic of movies is best summarized by that right where it's like these fuckers just spray painted a mask and it's the most iconic image ever and no one can figure out and just they cut the holes too big yeah they cut a little bigger right yeah you know it's like but i'm looking at this i'm looking at pictures here of him in Halloween 4 and in H2O where you can see his eyes.

And it's just so pitiful. I don't like it. I also think there's something to like, oh, God, it's so fucking bad. And he looks like there's something. He's got like a sad expression. He does frowny. Oh, my God. Like he looks kind of dopey.

Yeah. Oh, boy. And he's blonde, which people hate. Right. you have the weird poutiness of shatner to begin with right once you know what shatner you can never unsee the shatner lips in particular lips right the mouth but then there's also this thing of like they don't really make masks like this today for halloween costumes where it's like if you're a kid and you're dressing up as captain kirk you get the fucking uniform and a wig you don't wear a mask that's replicating this adult man's face, right? They mostly sell masks for characters who have faces that cannot be replicated

with like, you know, grease paint or whatever. And I do find that when you do see masks like rubber overhead masks like this that are replicating human faces, they're usually caricatured. You know, you're seeing like you're like absurd Donald Trump masks. Yeah, right. Whereas there's something weird about like this being like the Don Post company trying to as realistically as possible capture the flesh of William Shatner. It's such a weird image. There's like an image I found here of all nine different designs across all the movies. And it's just so wild.

They're so bad. Some of them look so feeble. But there's some of them have really intense eyebrows, like eyebrows painted onto the mask. Yep. There's just a weird amount of detail in trying to capture a very neutral expression, which in and of itself is odd. And there's like the one cheek that is more defined than the other that sort of line in there, like all this shit that's just odd where it's like, that's an odd product. When you look at the unpainted mask as it existed,

it's odd. It's weird that it has real hair. Like everything about it is strange. It's great. It's great. We talked about it right it's incredible yeah much like the the sort of eerily empty streets and the overabundance of music but perfect music it's just this exercise in in minimalism and cost efficiency yeah that inexplicably in this movie hit the hit the bullseye yeah i want to just briefly talk about the what i wrote down is the sequence where loomis says he's on his way um i love when he just him commandeering the truck and killing the person i love the clothesline the the speed at which he disappears from the clothesline is the point where it's like you almost start to wonder is this literal or is this now is she seeing him to such an extent that

it's starting to affect her mind and she's sure she's imagining because he's just it's like right clothesline one two seconds looks back not a trace and he doesn't move that it's just you start to wonder how much of this is affecting her psychologically okay so this is exciting i want to just really quickly i just want to ask because i feel like you've you've seen this a ton david you've seen this a ton. David, you've seen this a ton. Sure. Griff as well. Do any of you. I have not seen this many times.

Okay. Yeah. Do any of you, have you ever noticed the poster in her room? I noticed it yesterday and I, well, it's a cat, right? It is not. There's a cat in one in the room she's babysitting uh oh and one of the whatever of course she watches the original thing with her yeah well they they watch the thing they do yeah they do and we check back in on how that movie's playing out

um it's a man with like a hat it's like a painting but a poster and it says james enser oh yeah i never like knew this before i looked it up it's like my favorite fucking painter of all time he is um he's a belgian painter he apparently had a lot of influence on expressionism and surrealism like kind of like an early practitioner and he is just a fucking dang ass freak a lot of masks a lot of skulls a lot of fucking skulls yeah but like people like kind of dressed up in fancy clothes but a lot of skulls a lot of fucking skulls yeah but like people like kind of dressed up in fancy clothes but they're wearing skulls just like this really completely outsider art almost but in a but at the same time he has training and like comes from money but like seems

like was a fucking crazy person so he gets the official daf qualification absolutely okay so i just feel like that was a fun little easter egg that i noticed for the first time and was very excited by um so i recommend people check out answer ensor um ben what do you think of when they reveal that he's dug up the grave are you a fan of grave robbing absolutely yeah yeah knocking over headstones or stealing them well i i would say i i don't it's not cool to knock over a tombstone you know what if it's your family like like it is here what do you mean well he steals his sisters right right right judas headstone then i sign off on it okay you know yeah yeah it is one of those it is one of those like lingering

things of ickiness in this movie that that is never the headstone is seen but the dug up grave is never yeah you don't you don't see the body or anything like that right nor do you know what has happened the headstone is his most elaborate whatever yeah i was gonna say bit but it's beyond a bit really it's also kind of like what's the person that she's like huh like or no not not a who is it who sees the babysitter with the judith headstone is it laurie everyone else has been killed and put like but like she's like is she like who the fuck is judith right like judith well that's what they're saying because everyone's like that's the house that's the murder yeah and as carver has said like every town has one of those houses especially small towns you have to imagine it's only been 15 years they know we had a hole in our town but continue sorry yes that's the hole where that's where the

mayor was where the where the world opened up and people were sucked into it you got a problem come to the hole there but yeah i i do love him coming to town killing the mechanic along the way not that you need to explain where he gets and this is now like something that in a new movie they'd be like really got to explain where he gets the jumpsuit we need a jumpsuit set piece or whatever right it's just nice they find the dead body but the new one literally does do that right it's like he kills a guy at a gas station so he's like in his underwear it's supposed to be a moment where it's like yeah and it was at my screening it certainly was it's very yes now it's all become like Terminator 2 where you have to explain

where they get the cool clothes. Right. But I just like this sort of sequence where Loomis is on the trail and he finds the dead body and he finds the dug up grave. And then he's just like, I know he's going home.

That's it. I know now. Gotta load my six shooter. I just love that Loomis, like his pulse never quickens. It's just kind of like, I knew this day was coming. From the moment I saw

that this existed on this plane i knew my life would be committed to trying to mitigate the damage of this soul at this point this is where i was just blown away because now there's the the music right now is just going wild and then it just basically cuts to darkness and it just goes from daytime to nighttime when the babysit when everyone has sort of made their plans for the babysitting with all the business of i'll come here you'll come there you'll let me in and then it's just suddenly like you see taillights and the music gets a little bit more menacing and now it's just nighttime and the breathing starts again we should also mention right michael does spend a lot of

this movie driving around in a station wagon which is like a big point of contention amongst fans of how he learned how to drive and when. Of course it is, yeah. They mention that in the movie. They say, he can't drive. And Loomis goes, he was doing a good job of it yesterday. But hasn't different sequels offered different explanations to try to like... Like they let him out for driving lessons? Right.

I went on some rabbit hole of like the driving he already knew how to drive when he was seven because his dad was an alcoholic that's sort of bad or that like there was uh maybe it's in like a novelization or something someone was saying that like they like explained that in the van when they drove him to the institution in the first place there was a plexiglass partition so he could watch the driving and study it. It's novelization. It's not that hard to drive. I mean, anyone can fucking do it.

Not anyone can. I forgot. The real argument is right. If you put someone behind the wheel of the car, they might know how the basic mechanism is supposed to work. Don't test me on that. The novelization explains what you're talking about. They watch Dr. Loomis drive.

Right. Which is like, once again, more info that I. Who cares? I think you should leave guys season two. I have never related to anything. I never saw the movie. It hurts. As a young person, it was like, how can Michael drive?

Right. No. It was just like, I don't know. He can drive. He's scary. Yes. He's supernatural. He has scary powers. I think's scary powers drive a car is the magical powers either from heaven or hell but you know what else he does that really blew on his mind last night uh is he eats a dog what do you none of you catch this well and look this up this is there's a halloween wikipedia

about the dog he kills the dog and right he has eaten him i do think this comes up in in they arrive at the meyer's house and loomis is there with sheriff lee bracket and they're like what's up with that dog and he goes he must have gotten hungry oh yeah yeah that's right and you look it up on halloween wiki it's called like val's dog or something kills the mechanic kills his dog when he gets to town he goes to his old house kills a dog eats the dog and on it was like wait what and it's just that kind of detail like can you imagine that being in the new movie in like a 3 000 screen halloween 20 million dollar release where they're like what's up with that dog and they say oh well michael myers ate him he's hungry basically what happens here

to me is like a breathlessly efficient series of parallel action where the kids are split up in a geography that basically makes no sense where it's like she's doing laundry but the laundry is like in another house well i was trying to figure that out right it's like she definitely locks herself in the lawn i guess it maybe is like a shed or a garage or something it's like a guest house where the laundry which makes absolutely no sense but regardless the parallel action of annie and laurie split up while babysitting and the only thing you're ever using to bridge the two houses is this vast empty desert in between them it's halloween night it can't be that late because they say early on we're going to make these plans to meet up at

6 30 and then it gets dark and then within five minutes of the movie there it is abandoned there's not a single trick-or-treater there's not a single they don't right they don't have it is very eerie how few people there are now this is obviously a budgetary thing it's also incredibly unsettling and odd how often they look across the street at these houses and it seems like it is three in the morning whereas it must probably be like eight at night or whatever and they're watching the parents aren't even home from whatever they're out doing they're watching the thing which is 80 minutes long sure and time passes and then the world is just empty except for these six people and the amount of parallel action of going between annie who's then killed in the car and laurie who doesn't know that the

kid she's you know she's watching the kid for annie while annie does whatever cleans the butter off of her shirt it is you're all just going from place to place. And for this whole period, it's so quotidian what's happening. It's so quotidian. And then occasionally there's just a shot of essentially a tumbleweed blowing down the street with piercing synth music. And every time that happens, you're just like, it's a POV shot. And you're like, oh, this is bad. He's out there.

He's just going from house to house. He's looming. And then there's the really wide shot of him carrying the body into the house. like oh this is bad he's out there he's just going from house to house he's looming and then there's the those the really wide shot of him carrying the body into the house there's all these great tableaus in this these very eerie and the way he walks is so effective we sort of talked about it this is when loomis is outside the house flapping his arms and doing the voice and saying kids keep away i do i do enjoy loomis's theatricality yes uh with the carrying of the body that always freaked me out especially because the shot just feels so like you would look outside your own house and look across the street and just witness some horrific thing that just is happening.

And then what do you do? Right, what are you going to do exactly? But then like right around here, which is when Bob and Linda are fooling around before Bob gets killed and his glasses get taken. They sure do. are fooling around before bob gets killed and his glasses get taken they sure do there's like easily 10 minutes where there's no music which after the prominence of the music is so equally unsettling it's like damned if you do damned if you don't and at this point it's just like it's just great they're just going about their business but this is where i made a note that i thought was kind of amazing i never thought this about this movie before but now i'm thinking

it about a lot of carpenter movies which is you know the hitchcock principle that establishing shots are inherently uncinematic and therefore you shouldn't use them how hitchcock would say he hates establishing shots right yeah if you're setting a scene inside ben's apartment you can't start the scene with just a shot of the outside of the building that scene has no cinema to it right what does that shot tell you this movie flips this movie solves that every establishing shot of the house because really just in these two houses every establishing shot is a cinematic moment that moves the story forward increases the tension plays the music and it completely fixes hitchcock's problem with establishing shots by making each one

the same shot over and over but like super foreboding uniquely horrible and foreboding and it is in the fabric of the movie it's not just like we're in this house and now we're in that house and now just to remind you we're back in this house it's like this is not an establishing shot this is michael watching the shot you know how you know is michael because you're hearing his his horrible little jaws theme and i was very taken with how well those establishing shots are deployed this time i never really locked in on it before i love that then bob and linda have some sex they sure do fast sex yeah i mean i mean bob i don't want to shame anyone but i i don't think bob's doing a great job yeah and he's kind of like oh yeah and she's sort of trying to be like

yeah yeah it kind of feels like go get me a fucking beer yeah she's still like good job bob well unfortunately for bob he doesn't come back and it's a the perp my to me the perfect jump scare where it's not that complicated it's kind of like the i mean obviously the greatest jump scare ever which is leather face pulling the guy you, whacking the guy in the head and pulling the girl. No, no, no. The guy. No, it's a girl. No, no, no.

The guy coming in, Leatherface hitting him in the head and then pulling the door shut. That's a guy. Now I'm going to look up the scene. I'm trying to picture it. I thought you were going to say the greatest jump scare is boom, a pipe flies through the window. God damn. I mean, look, I don't know why look i don't know why i don't know why i did this to myself i didn't have to say it you will rue there's no

see yeah the girl comes in yeah it's the guy the guy comes in oh okay and then leatherface just walks out okay okay and you're like what and he's Okay, okay. And you're like, what? And he whacks him, closes the door. Sure, sure, sure. And you're like, whoa. And it's the same when Michael comes out. I stand corrected, yes. Just comes out of the door, you know, and then simply stabs him and that's that.

But then, it's not that's that, because then he stands there for like 10 seconds. And looks at him. Oh, it's so good. That's the kind of moment that a movie can't really pull off anymore. The tilting of the head. Yeah.

That's the kind of thing that every sequel and reboot and everything has tried to make a shot that just completely disturbing that has no it's just a simple far away shot and it is so creepy just to see him standing there looking at what he has done but there's also and thinking how can i get those glasses over a sheet when other movies replicate this right other halloween movies it feels like they're making him more menacing whereas for this it's like is he an innocent like does he understand anything it's the problem with this equalizing right they turn in them into these legends and then it's like, right, what is Michael thinking? Once you're doing that, you're in trouble.

He's on animal instinct here. That's why he kills and eats an animal. But from the time that Bob and Linda are dead after this, this is what I was saying. This is a huge period where there's no dialogue. And Laurie, Jamie Lee is completely isolated from everyone else. The kids are asleep

and this begins like a 20 minute sequence where she's interacting with nobody and the movie hasn't had that much dialogue anyway but now it has none and she's completely isolated everyone's dead she doesn't know this and she's just like looking out the window and goes to the other house and then there's a cue here that's the first time in a long time that there's a different piece of music which is very interesting at this point in the movie okay and then she finds a slightly different cue and then she finds the gravestone everyone dead crammed into the room because she hears the murder on the phone but she thinks it's just a joke or whatever or or maybe some some hanky-panky some hot hanky-panky. But it's strange enough to pique her interest.

Right. And then we're... But also, to Griffin's point again, I just want to keep pointing these things out. Like him, as we talked about, with the sheet and the glasses, that's another piece of iconography of this movie. You could put it on a figure or on a shirt

and everyone would be like, I love that moment. As much as I love the little boy in the clown suit. Right. The Bob ghost disguise is iconic in its own way, separate from the iconography of Michael Myers in the same way that little boy clown Michael Myers

is also separately iconic, not as a variation of. But once she goes in the other house and finds everybody, as we were talking about, it's now just basically just a chase. Well, right, it's just him chasing her from house to house i mean i the moment i love the most is i mentioned is her banging on the door the lights coming on but no help coming i love that so much totally because it's so unspoken this is like to griffin's point of like his preference of horror this is where the movie is playing by silent film horror rules because from the time that the kids are asleep and all the

other teenagers are dead there's nobody for her to talk to and everything that happens here could just be a silent right horror blocking it's just somebody being pursued by someone else right it's camera moving perfectly it's faces reacting and it's wonderful music right it's a disturbing figure slowly coming out of the shadows and the person not for 20 minutes it's not until tommy wakes up and loomis shows back up that we snap out of what is basically just pure cinema and tommy waking up it's she just has that brief moment where she thinks she got him and tommy knows we can't kill the boogeyman she stabs him in the neck with a knitting needle she sure does she hides in the closet i remember seeing this as a teenager and going why can't he get through those

like plywood closet doors tommy wallace plays michael myers in that scene right because he had designed the closet and knew how to take it apart literally in that one scene it's also just he's trying very hard to get through what looks like a wicker door it's true it takes a while there's like seven minutes left in the movie at this point is one of those things just speaking about carpenter knowing to like get out while the getting's good right yeah where you're just like any other movie even if you are to believe that this is the final stretch of of our hero fighting our our villain you're still like what 20 minutes of wrap up and then 10 minutes of credit and you're like seven minutes all in until

the disc stops right until right until mpaa logo right right like kind of just remarkable yep yeah it is but it is great like it's just it's escalated it's become kind of the silent sequence and now she's doing this kind of thematically nice thing of protecting the children loomish fires off the shots this is when the mask gets lifted up which anna thinks is a very interesting potentially controversial moment i love that moment i love it too it's not that she didn't like it it's just it's very curious if you know the sequels how much that would even in the new one where you never you frame him from behind or in the rob zombie i know which i well rob zombie has a lot of that's where it became controversial i feel like people were very very dissatisfied

with his treatment of mich Myers overall, really. I really like those movies, but they're just completely different. You just have to think of them as like really, you know, the first one is a little more trying to be a remake, I guess. Yeah. I never saw the second one. The second one is Up Your Alley. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why I never did.

I mean, it's just it's just an incredibly it's one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen I've always wanted to you know where it's like what would the psychology of Michael Myers be like rather than John Carpenter who's like this is an unknowable evil he's like no no no no no these are circumstances Americans grow up in let's delve in yeah I should watch it

he's going in the entire other direction this October I'll watch both Halloween 2's uh this is a question for you guys He's going in the entire other direction. Maybe this October I'll watch both Halloween 2s. This is a question for you guys. Okay. So the Mask Off moment, I'm not as deep in the weeds in the Halloween franchise, obviously, as you guys are.

Tony Morin plays him in that moment, plays his face, essentially. And of course, you see his eye has been wounded. Well, that was my question, I guess. What guess is your question i read something with carpenter where he was saying like it's it's sort of this interesting case in like the power of suggestion cinema that i'll talk to people about how like disturbing it is when you see michael's face in the first movie and how disfigured he is i think to some degree it's people combining it with like j Voorhees and whatever. Always Mandela effect with these things. Right.

But he's like, when you look at him, his face is actually totally normal except you see the damage of the stab. Exactly. It's supposed to be the hanger. Her second attack has messed with his eye. But there's something to, A, I think the weird expression he has on at the moment.

It's such a good expression that's sort of again kind of contemplative sort of thing where he's like what his his expression is weird and then also i think the limitations of the budget sure the makeup on the damage of the eye from the hanger gives him this vaguely like for this split second you're seeing him quasimodo ish vibe a little bit but this is another as i was saying this is another vhs thing right where for 20 years people watching this movie if they tried to pause it you just can't figure it out you couldn't get a clear look at it and much like as i mentioned earlier as we should just mention like when this movie was broadcast on tv he shot 10 more minutes of scenes while they were filming halloween 2 which features a scene where loomis

is in the asylum with boy michael and i must have seen that because i always thought that was in the movie right i must have maybe that was on this sci-fi marathon i saw or somewhere because i always was like and of course that happens and you see the boy and you don't of course in the actual movie and this is one of those things where it's like yeah and of course his face is all deformed and it's not and of course they're brother and sister which they're not and then i just love it he loomis shoots him tommy says was that the boogeyman as a matter of fact it was cue the theme 89 minutes yeah revisit locations meyer's house the i love the revisiting the the staircase the house like i love all that

that's such a perfect capper yeah that stuff is great um i love that laurie sobbing obviously yes she's upset yeah he's gone he's gone he's gone and it's 89 minutes and the theme is just wailing and then the credits but it's also like he could be anywhere like i feel right but but it's like he could be right behind you right it's incredible he's not right behind me isn't it you look at the reviews of this movie when it came out and people were like really dismissive of it in a way that's kind of astonishing where they're like well he's just using all the old tricks in the book like especially for all the context you're setting up about how much this movie is like a manifestation of all these things that have

piecemeal been building up in horror and everyone's like yep it's another one of these it's not to speak ill of critics but right this sort of thing like well this doesn't scare me i know i know from tropes you won't get me this like has not been synthesized before in this way and cisco and ebert to their credit were two of the only people of prominence at the time who were just like raved it right they were like this thing's so fucking scary right what are you talking about and the anecdote he told i thought was so good was he was like we walked out of the screening and gene was so scared that he took a cab home and the theater was two blocks from his home that's the review of the movie the review of the movie

is it worked that well and then i got home and i got in the shower and i was so scared shitless i kept on checking the fucking curtain every other minute two thumbs up go see it if you like scary movies you need to write a review like that you can look i should write more reviews about how i felt in the shower after yeah i am right i'm writing this review from a secluded location that i have moved to because i am too frightened to continue living my life what if i I just became the most over the top film critic of all? But that's what I'm saying. Yes, they loved it and this is a wonderful response,

but the canonization of these kinds of movies does not happen in the mainstream. Correct. It takes thousands and millions of fans owning that tape and loving this film for decades for everybody to be like, you can't argue with it. It's an odd as anna said

a very weird dreamlike movie that kind of has these strange periods of people doing laundry that don't have anything to do with anything and are inherently not scary except it has this great music and it's like it's not tight as a drum it's 89 minutes so it's tight movie but it's not that the script it's not like the thing where every single scene is perfectly functioning to move the plot forward. It's tight as a drum in its shape,

pun intended, but it's not like, oh, there's not a wasted minute in that movie. There's tons of stuff in this movie, but it's all character. It's character of Laurie

being alone and it's the sense of this town with this creepy murder house on the block and a town that has no one else in it and all of the sort of faults town with this creepy murder house on the block and a town that has no one else in it and all of the sort of faults such as they are

ultimately become strengths over time. Well, yeah, and all the happy accents of this movie. What's the producer's name? Yablanis? Wait, the producer of this movie? Yes. The one who's not a cod? Right.

Who sort of comes to Carpenter as like... Yablan's? Yes, Yablan's, sorry. Right yeah right who comes to carpenter with like he's like babysitter murder right and like that's supposed to win the title right another great carpenter had years earlier reached out to bob clark and was like you should do a black christmas sequel and he's like i don't want to do horror movies anymore i'd like to make baby geniuses to which i go sounds like you're still in the horror business. But he goes to Bob Clark and he's like, would you let me write one? And he's like, no.

He sort of pitched what he thought it would be, right? Which was like, he returns a year later. So that's like part of it. There's the Yablans part of it, right? There's him. Compass International Pictures. Sure. He co-finances, right?

There's him experiencing the kid at the psychiatric hospital right like all these pieces come together he's able to pitch this to a congo like this is simple this is cheap and then they realize at some point in the timeline oh we like this originally been planned as a movie or at least vaguely conceptualized as a movie that would take place over multiple nights we don't have the budget for that so now it has to be one night because that saves us the night he came home that's right it is the night but the idea that used to be the nights he came home the fact that the movie is halloween is reverse engineered from we can't afford three nights let's make it one night if it's one night it should be the scariest

night the scariest night is halloween if it takes place on halloween we should call the movie halloween and then we can release it around halloween and then we can release it every it should be the scariest night. The scariest night is Halloween. If it takes place on Halloween, we should call the movie Halloween. And then we can release it around Halloween. And then we can release it every Halloween. But like all the weird stuff. And then we can make a franchise that's just called Halloween with other stuff that happens.

Wait, wait, wait, where are you guys? Wait, where are you guys going? You guys aren't into this? All the weird like backpedaling into this, you know, of just like, well, we should find a scary clown mask. But what if as a weird backup option just as an alt we spray paint it's just all these things worked out yeah

what i'm talking about of like the the improbable backwards canonization of things like you could never have convinced people in the 90s that there would be in a new halloween a shot in the trailer of silver shamrock masks from halloween 3 season of the witch and horror people are like oh my god they're bringing in the silver shamrock mask this is amazing yeah at a time where people were like oh everyone knows halloween 3 sucks doesn't have michael myers in it you don't need to watch it and now everyone's like that movie's canonical masterpiece people love it it's about druid chips and halloween mask it's fucking insane it's very anti-irish everybody everybody loves it and we're going to drop an easter egg into the marketing and people are going to lose their minds because this thing has gone from an irrelevant

failure that the franchise had to rewrite to now the second legacy sequel which is rewriting the franchise again but we want Silver Shamrock. I mean, I've talked about it before, though. But the general thing of they do a sequel to this movie. Then they do another movie that's not connected. And then they're like, okay, forget it. We'll do a sequel to two. And then a sequel to four.

And then a sequel to five. And they're like, okay, no, let's do another sequel to two. Forget all that. Yeah, right. And then they're like, okay, we'll do a sequel to seven. We'll kill off Laurie Strode. That's a good idea, right? Right.

Kill her off in like 10 minutes. Most of the movie's about Busta Rhymes. It's like Halloween 3-2. It's Halloween Resurrection is Halloween 3-2. Sure, that's a good way to put it. And then they're like, forget all that. We'll do a reboot. Halloween 1 again.

We'll do a sequel to the reboot. And then they're like, no, no, let's make a sequel to one. We never did that before. This is now Halloween two, three,

but then in the sequel to one. So it's now Halloween two, two is what it is. We're going to tip our hat to Halloween three season of the witch because fans love it. And it's gone from something that the franchise had to immediately be like, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, forget about that. To like, well, you have to acknowledge. So, wait. Halloween Kills is Halloween 2-2-2. Right. In a way. So, I'm just realizing. It's the second movie that was the second try

at a second Halloween movie. So, Halloween Resurrection is Halloween 3-2-2. Halloween Resurrection is Halloween 3-2-2. Sure, we kind of. Because you're saying Halloween H2O is Halloween it's Halloween 3 my girlfriend in the other room right now is literally like what the fuck are these guys talking about

like Halloween H2O is Halloween 3 second edition Halloween 4 is Halloween 3 first edition if that makes sense I don't even know how we talk about the actual Halloween 3 Halloween Resurrection is the sequel to the second iteration of the third Halloween movie. And then David Gordon Green comes in and is like, no, no, no.

I'm doing a sequel to Halloween. Well, we already did that. Not this way. Right. That's 2-2. Right. Yeah. I want to just say one final thing about John Carpenter.

Yeah. He has nice long white hair. He's just a cool looking guy. He is a cool looking guy. Is that I've talked about him so much in this big theory that i came up with that he is kind of one of the most definitive filmmakers of the vhs era and i don't know if you guys i unfortunately saw your icon yesterday of your schedule so i know you're covering uh some somebody's watching me but you're not which is before this and it's important but you're not covering cigarette burns we look look okay let me just let me just say this let me just say that we don't know what Which is before this and it's important. But you're not covering cigarette burns. We, look, look.

Okay, let me just say this. Let me just say this. We don't know what we're doing about those things yet. We plan the Patreon more short term than main feed. And so body bags, cigarette burns, those sorts of things, we just haven't decided yet. Pro-life is the other one, right? Let me just say, I was working at Kim's video when Masters of Horror started coming out on DVD. Let me just say, I was working at Kim's video when Masters of Horror started coming out on DVD.

I cannot overstate the cultural impact in the cult and DVD collecting community. The Carpenter is back. These things are pretty fucking good. His Masters of Horror episode, there were, I remember, I tried to find footage of this. I couldn't find it. People came into the store and they were like, you guys have cigarette burns? Sold out everywhere. And we were like were like yes we have 500 copies and they were like people were lining up at best buy before they opened it was on the news the news was there cover like i was like what and they were like yeah people had because no one had showtime and there was no tv

didn't work in the same way so if you you missed Masters of Horror, it's like, well, seven months from now, we'll release the episodes two at a time on individual DVDs. And his kind of reemergence of people being like, he's crapped out, vampires, ghosts of Mars. And then it's like, he's a master of horror. He made these two short films. They're pretty fucking classic.

And everybody lost their mind for those things. And it's just one of the craziest things where he went from being the vhs era and now it's like buy this dvd it has a one hour john carpenter movie on it yeah it's 20 and there's one other one hour episode on it we'll do we'll we'll find a way to do them i just want to mention if it doesn't come up again i don't know if anybody else would say hey do you guys remember what a huge deal cigarette burns well i remember it being a big deal but i also i remember it being a big deal because i was such a dare i say it avid ain't a cool reader that that also felt like this weird seismic thing of like oh yeah totally this site is now like impacting actual pop culture yeah it just was

it was just a huge deal to people who shopped at kim's bought a lot of dvds collected home video to have john carpenter make this thing you couldn't have dvr'd it there was no on demand yeah you had to buy the dvd of his new thing that was a return to form and it's fine it's it's pretty good sure we watched it a couple years ago it's fine but i had to mention it in case it never comes up again but i hope it does because it'll there there's going to be a lot of ways in which it's going to come up that and but and pro-life sure yes uh body bags is another thing we also have to figure out how to tackle there's a lot he's done a lot of shit we're figuring it out we're figuring out the point is we've only announced someone's watching me and elvis those feel just kind of crucial soon sure all right yeah and we're we're

figuring out the rest of it let's play the box office game now is this in your book of old-timey box office it sure is and halloween opened number nine on 25th october 1978 did it open in like one theater somewhere it opened in many places but then they took it out of circulation quickly and turned it into a thing you know where it's like it's coming back you know what i mean like they want they turn it into a thing. It's coming back. You know what I mean? They turned it into a word of it. Part of its box office success. The weird vision for that

is impressive. No, I don't have totals. Only the 80s book has totals. But of course the movie, I should say, obviously it's one of the most profitable movies of its ilk. It cost 300 grand. It cost $300,000. It made like $70 million all told or whatever.

It was considered the most profitable independent film of all time at that point in time, I believe. I think so. But whenever you see this, there's always qualifiers loaded into these things. And it's like, what's independent? Obviously, Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity and all that eventually swing in. Carpenter, uh, only took $10,000 for all his duties on this movie.

Yes. He did get a percentage, right? So he did make money off of it. It wasn't like MASH where he made nothing. Right. But he never made as much off of how big this franchise got as he probably should have. Yes.

And, uh, it probably cut him a nice check to do the score for the new one. Sure. Well, that's the whole thing with the wind, with the rem and sequels he's always like are you paying me then i support the remake or whatever you're not i hold out my hand give me the money give me money um there's also the weird circular circular thing where he was like i know we need a mask let's go

to the don post company they're the best at making masks we can't pay you any money to design anything but we'll give you like points in the movie right and they were like hard pass and they were like fuck what are we gonna do let's buy a ton post mask spray paint it white and then they're able to produce that mask and make so much fucking money off of it but then i think the mask rights have also gotten weird anyway i'm sure they have yeah it seems like just i'm excited i'm excited to participate in the 70s box office number one at the box office this week new this this week, is a film for which Oliver Stone won an Academy Award. Midnight Express.

It's Midnight Express. The winner of Best Score. I guess Giorgio Moroder did too. He did. It is weird how much of a sensation that movie was in the 70s versus where it stands in the canon now. It is. Where people are like, oh, right, Midnight Express. That movie was so successful that Turkish prison just sort of became a bylaw for, like, a place you don't want to be.

Right. Also, like, as someone who spent much of the lockdown watching 70s and 80s sitcoms, it's like, that's still a fucking reference in 86? You don't want to be in a Turkish prison, Griffin. You won't stop. Look, I saw Midnight Express. Like, they keep on making it. As if, like, fucking Midnight Express is Yoda or something. And as a kid i always

got midnight express and midnight run same yes right i was like i know one of these is fun and one of them is harrowing right and one but but i don't but now i'm confused yeah number two at the box office has been number one i think for a long ass time i'm not just i'm sorry i'm imagining the thought experiment of what if you swapped the scores on midnight run and midnight express and you had midnight express with the danny elfman score yeah like saxophone going i'm sure midnight run would work with the marauder score it would probably a nice score um this is the third most successful film of 1978 it's a comedy third most successful 1978 a comedy is it stir crazy it's not stir it's not a wilder prior no they're not involved sure

i'm trying to think of very high grossing comedies of the seven huge huge huge movie massive hit massively influential uh is it up in smoke no but up in smoke is number four my friend okay good job is it there are no sequels there's other movies under the branding of this movie whoa there's okay it's a 1978 hugely influential animal house national ampoules animal house oh oh oh well that okay i don't know how else to describe yeah there aren't sequels but i mean obviously it's a brand they revive over and over again it is animal house massively successful in its 14th week. And I was looking at the box office game, and I'm like, oh, it looks like Animal House is going to be number one.

Because it's number one for week after week after week. And then Midnight Express knocks it off. Yeah. People want to get serious for one weekend. Number three at the box office, Griffin, is I think one of your favorite movies of all time. And it's new this week. Number three at the box office is one of my favorite movies of all time. And it's new this week. Is it by one of my favorite directors?

Yes. It's seen as a bad movie and a flop. Is it Brewster McCloud? No, that's 70. That's 70? Yeah. Or 71? 71.

It's the same year as another great old movie. It comes out the same year as MASH. Right. I forgot it was that early. It's very early. Yeah. Okay. Wait a second.

It's one of my favorite directors. It's seen as a flop? At the time, I believe. It's certainly poorly received. David's sitting back with his smug look on his face because he's astonished that I wouldn't immediately recall. No, I'm not astonished. That, of course, the most important American film of 1978 is Sidney Lumet's The Wiz. Correct.

It's The Wiz. A movie I study maybe as obsessively as you study Halloween. Jeez. And a movie in which I think the powers are similar. I like the fact that every musical number in that movie is shot like it's from the perspective of Michael Myers five blocks away. Observing these pitiful people and their miserable life as they dance their way to doom. What a wild, what a wild. It's a movie about the existential loneliness of the human condition.

This is a pretty good top five. How oppressed people use music to convince themselves that there's any joy in life. It's a masterpiece. I gotta see The Wiz. We'll do The Wizmate someday. Here's the thing. It's a masterpiece that I find half of its running time unwatchable. I find all of its running time unwatchable.

I think half of it's as good as anything anyone's captured. Alex says all. The unwatchable stuff I still find compelling. Zero watchable minutes in that movie, in my opinion. it's as good as anything anyone says all the unwatchable stuff zero watchable finance compelling that movie in my opinion it's so um so just to recap our top four midnight express animal house the whiz and up in smoke i'm just saying i mean you can have a good time at the american movie theaters right now number five is a comedy from one of griffin's favorite directors he's already been invoked in this box office game. He's already been invoked in this. Look, it's this year's Altman's movie. Oh. This year's Altman movie.

So 78 would be. Fuck. Okay. Because wait. Nashville 75, right? Or 76? Nashville is 1975. So then 78 would be.

It's this year's Altman movie. It's not a very big hit. No. Is it? A movie of his is called Not a Very Big Hat? No, sorry. Is it a wedding? It's a wedding. Which I've never seen.

I never have either. It's a weird blind spot. Have you seen A Wedding? I have, yeah. Desi Arnaz, right? Sure. I believe he's the star. Carol Burnett? Carol Burnett.ul duly at the altman series at mama like seven or eight years ago yeah it's a wedding right i don't know what if there was a wedding what if there's a wedding it's it's nashville at a wedding yeah it's just you know it's the beginning of because it's not margo at the wedding it's nashville it's 76 is buffalo

bill 77 is three women which is obviously great 78 is a wedding and perfect couple same year okay and then 80 is health and papa you know he's he's four years in the basement he's he's swimming against the current at this point yeah that's rough um number six is a movie called the big fix with richard dreyfus i don't know it i gotta fix it one of those i'm sure that's what it's like one of those dreyfus vehicles you know what i'm gonna it. I'm sure that's what it's like. One of those Dreyfus vehicles that no one has watched. That is pretty much the vibe I'm getting from this poster. I like this poster. I've seen this poster.

He's peeking. That's a real poster. Are you in or are you not? We're giving you all we've got here. The Boys from Brazil. Gregory Peck. You got Death on the Nile With Peter Ustinov I've never seen any of the Ustinov

We just watched that last year It's pretty solid There's Halloween Which I think we talked about in this episode And then Comes a Horseman A great title Is that the Alan Pecula movie? I'm looking it up

He has some movie with a title that's that or like that Yeah it's Pecula James uh i'm looking it up because i do have some movie with the title that or like that it's a yeah it's for cool yeah yeah uh jane fonda james conn yeah i was gonna say 70s horse movies you have electric horsemen you have comes a horseman you have they shoot horses don't they that's 68 though right what if they shot horses didn't they i don't know the pitch what if and hear me out. They shot horses, didn't they? They shot horses, didn't they? So what's it about? It's about people like roller skating for five days straight. I just love the idea.

Roller skating in a circle. Or maybe the studio, he was like, the movie's called They Shoot Horses. And the studio's like, no, that's too gross. Let's add a don't they just to kind of maybe make it ambiguous. I think a lot of other movies could be improved by that at the end. Midnight Express, isn't it? All these movie titles, they're so arrogant. They're so assured of what they're saying.

You have no question? All right. David, how many weekends has The Wiz been in release at this point? This is it's for, I told you, it's new this week. Jesus. Okay. And it's opening at number three? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Midnight Express, The Wiz, and Halloween are express the whiz and halloween are the new and comes a horseman are the new movies this i just want to say for perspective i believe yes 1978 the same year the halloween was made for 325 000 i believe the whiz cost 40 million dollars it cost more than star wars the year before i'm seeing here 24 million which is still uh triple the budget of star wars sure okay fair enough but you know yes a lot yes um but yes i have never seen the whiz of course we all love the tagline to the whiz griff what if there was a whiz the whiz the stars the music wow

yeah um a gutter comes through the window all right we're done we're done we're done we're done we're done we're done I have nothing else in my notes. Ben, read that time code to me there. So we've probably definitely gone over three, probably like 315, I'm guessing. 315 before ads? Before ads. Short ads. So this might be number one, right?

I think it might be. And I gotta say, I have to say. Thanos voice. Not at all my intention. I didn't want... Bullshit. I called shenanigans on that. For weeks,

you were like, the manifesto just got another page. Five months. My intention was pure density. I had no... I thought... I didn't know if I could get... Alex, I agree with that.

You were not being tangenty. You came in with a manifesto. You're focused. You had a lot you wanted to talk about and we talked about all of it. I agree with that. It's not like you came in and you were like, we got to do 10 minutes on Guns N' Roses.

No, but that density requires your space. He came in and I talked about the worst movie by this great director for the longest amount of time. It's more like, it would have hurt so much to be like, Blaine Jack's doing Halloween, Sunday morning, loaded up, and I see and I'm like...

150. Yeah, 150. And I'm like, what the hell went wrong? And you load loaded up and i see and i'm like 150 yeah 150 and i'm like what the hell went wrong and you load it up and it's just like so the thing about star wars and i'm just like guys come on what are we doing here we need to be does anyone listen to this this is a big one you have to be on topic and i have to break my pattern to come on so thank you for uh letting me sit on this episode for four months. I think it's our best ever. Really? I don't know.

I thought this was a pretty good episode, to be honest. I don't know. I just... I had a lot of fun. And it was great to be in person. It was nice to be in person. It wouldn't have been that long if we had not been in person. Correct. You say this.

I don't know. But you remember the level... But I'm saying, we were at levels of space madness by the end of that. We were... I was, I would say genuinely insane. You were serious? I felt like I was hallucinating. You can no longer be like, my battery's dying.

Goodbye, everybody. My battery, I believe, I'm sure was dying. I have no doubt. No, but also I'll say I've seen David's red indicator light flickering several times in this episode. He's got one at the side and it's Temple. Okay. Yes. Oh, David's personal

red indicator light. Yes, yes. No, his devices are fine. His druid chip that's in the mask on his head. Yes. Well said. Alex, thank you. Thank you so much. David has moved his microwave. That's how conclusively done he is with this episode. He swings it away like a shock

jock who's just made his final big joke. I'm putting my chips in. I'm like, enough. I'm not gambling anymore. Basta. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Thank you, too. Hey, you know, Halloween rules. Halloween rules, John Carpenter rules. I'm so happy to be at the beginning of what's going to just be a wonderful series

of episodes with great films, 12 of which I've rewatched in the last month. Hell yeah. Thank you to Maureen Barty for our social media. just be a wonderful series of episodes with great films, 12 of which I've rewatched in the last month. Hell yeah. Thank you to Murray Barty for our social media. Thank you to Pat Rounds and Joe Bowen for our work.

Thank you to JJ Burge, Nick Loriano, and Alex Ross-Perry for our research this week. I think you deserve that credit, even though you are not on payroll. No. A labor of love. A labor of love. A labor of love. Jesus, I need to stop talking. Thank you to AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for editing.

Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. And you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we are spelunking in the dark with a man they call Richard B. Riddick. Spelunking in the dark. Right? What better way to describe it? And as we said, someone's watching me and Elvis coming on the Patreon

in coming weeks. So timeline's a little wonky on that, but if you want to fill in those necessary gaps with those two big TV movies from early on in his career. Tune in next week for The Fog with Nia DaCosta returning to the show, just in time for Candyman.

And as always... He could have seen us through this window. He's only on the loan. He could have seen inside. Crash! A pipe goes through the window!